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SALT LAKE CITY — Memories of living in Syria are still raw for Kholoud Abou Arida.
"I don't want to remember," she explained in English she just learned 10 months ago. "Because everything (in Syria) is bad."
Arida arrived in Utah with her husband and three children as refugees, and she feels fortunate to have been able to leave Syria alive.
Her family left Syria in 2011 shortly after the the government jailed her husband and uncle "for no reason," she said. Arida said her uncle died in jail.
"People die in Syria. Only guys (the) army takes," she said.
A Syrian human rights website reports that one in every five displaced persons in the world right now is Syrian. The conflict started with protests against the government in 2011 and turned into war. Later, families in Syria saw the rise of ISIS, which led to the forced migration of millions of Syrian. Among them, 6.5 million people are displaced within Syria, and the United Nations reports 4.1 million Syrians are refugees. They're fleeing to Europe and neighboring countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, where the most number of Syrian are fleeing.
Arida feels the situation in Syria is dire but she understands why millions of her countrymen are making the trek to Europe. One of them is her brother. Arida described how he fled Syria by boat to France.
"Very hard because the small boat carried too many people," she explained. "And they take too much money. One person took $700."
Utah refugee advocates want the United States to do more to help Syrians.
The image of a young boy who drowned — found lying face-down on a beach in Turkey, for some is the wake-up call the world needs. "He should not have died. That is unacceptable," said Aden Batar, Immigration and Refugee Resettlement Director, Catholic Community Services. The toddler was reportedly one of at least 12 Syrians who drowned attempting to reach Greece. "This is (the result) of a lack of response from the international community," Batar said.
A majority of the refugees worldwide are children, Batar said. He believes the migrations and the conflicts surrounding the mass exodus will continue and become worse.
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"People are caught in the middle of this war between the (Bashar al-Assad) Assad regime and ISIL," Batar said. "Ever since the conflict started five years ago, the United States has resettled only 1500 Syrians. That's it."
Among them are three families from Syria now living in Utah, "less than 20 people," Batar said.
Batar said the U.S. has a history of resettling large groups of refugees. "Starting with World War II, the Vietnamese refugees following the fall of Saigon, and the former Soviet Union," Batar said, adding the U.S. is capable of leading the way in responding to the Syrian migration.
"Thousands of people have died as they were trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea trying to escape to safety," Batar said. "I don't think Europe is as prepared to handle that many at one given time."
Human rights organizations and refugee advocates are asking the Obama administration to allow more refugees fleeing Syria to enter the U.S.
"Every time we ask the (Obama) administration, they say there are security issues from that region, but that's not a good excuse," said Batar. "I think the whole world needs to come up with a global response to deal with this crisis — politically and in a humanitarian way."
As for Arida, she talks to her family almost every day. One of her brothers left Syria and migrated to Lebanon. But she's worried about her parents and three siblings who remain in Syria.
"At night I got to (the) hospital because my heart stop," said Arida. "I feel it stops because too much cry."
There are some 15 wars and conflicts in Africa, the Mideast and Asia that are to blame for the world's greatest displacement of families, according to a United Nations report. The UN also reported that there are 59.5 million people in the world who are on the move as refugees or displaced people within their home countries.
