A Meaningful Life

1 | hass

August 14th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

Iran took care of 3 million Afghan and Iraqi refugees without getting a penny in aid for over 10 years. In fact, Iran was home to the largest refugee population in the world:
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/1358/

2 | hass

August 14th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

According to the UNHCR:

The Islamic Republic of Iran has always been a nation of contradiction, but as one leading British NGO official said recently, “It has also always been at or near the top of the league table in welcoming and helping refugees.” In the 1990s, Iran sheltered a staggering 4.5 million exiles from Afghanistan and Iraq, the largest refugee caseload any single country has handled in modern times.

http://www.unhcr.org/publ/PUBL/3b6814092.html
or
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:poXHxnWYYdsJ:www.unhcr.org/publ/PUBL/3b6814092.html

3 | Lee

August 14th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

The oil rich countries who are not assisting countries whose citizens are starving are just a bunch of greedy unevolved pigs.

4 | Marc

August 15th, 2008 at 12:34 am

Good point Hass, I didn’t know that. Curious if they all got support via some sort of welfare system or did they have to just look after themselves? Might do some reading up on that. Despite that its a long time ago and all the money is being made now and the last couple of years. The best chance ever for EVERY country to pitch in and help with the food crisis being fueled by high oil prices.

5 | hass

August 15th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

The legal migrants got state welfare support, the illegal through the Iran’s highly subsidized system of aid to the poor, which has incidentally also dramatically raised the standard of living for other Iranians since the revolution too. Access to healthcare, clean water, electricity, telephones, education and indicators such as life expectancy, literacy (particularly for women), and medical care all shot up after the revolution despite the war with Iraq and the continued US sanctions.

6 | hass

August 15th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Incidentally, 3/4 of US foreign aid goes to Israel. Of the rest, most of the aid money is designated to be spent on US companies providing the aid — usually in the form of subsidies to US farmers (which itself causes poverty in the developing countries whose farmers can’t keep up with subsidized US corn)

So, these numbers don’t mean what you think they do.

7 | Marc

August 18th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

hass, I think you’re mixing food aid with military support - completely different topic. WFP funds aren’t going to military aid you know that. I don’t see any of these reasons being a good excuse for no funding. making excuses for the lack of funds by reconciling against events of the past points is not how anyones God would like us to operate. As for literacy for women, life expectancy and US sanctions that might need to be another post

p.s. i changed the title, think it was too rough, took on board what you said.