War forced half of all Syrians from home. Here’s where they went.
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Migrant crisis
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Editor’s Note: This story first published on Sept. 11, 2015. It was updated with more recent figures on April 18, 2016.
CNN
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Imagine every man, woman and child leaving home in 29 states, mostly in the U.S. West and Midwest. That’s everyone west of Ohio and Kentucky and north of Texas, all the way to California.
The 158 million people in those states make up the same share of the U.S. population – 49% – as the proportion of Syrians that have fled carnage there.
The war in Syria is so hellish and unrelenting that more people have left that country than any other in recent years. One of every five displaced persons in the world is Syrian.
Here’s a look at where those Syrians have gone.
War has displaced half of all people in Syria
Protests against the government in Syria in 2011 soon devolved into chaotic war. The fighting and later rise of ISIS had forced 10.6 million people from home by late 2015 – about half of Syria’s pre-war population.
Most Syrians who have left their homeland registered as refugees with the United Nations. Three in four Syrian refugees did that in Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan, according to UN figures from February 2016.
More of them have gone to Europe
The number of Syrians seeking safety in Europe more than doubled from 2014 to 2015. Many left Turkey and other countries for Europe to ask for asylum, a status that allows someone to live and work legally in another country.
“Wars, conflict and persecution have forced more people than at any other time since records began to flee their homes and seek refuge and safety elsewhere,” the United Nations said in June.
At least 15 wars and conflicts are to blame – in Africa, the Mideast and Asia.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Santi Palacios/AP
A woman cries after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea about 15 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on July 25, 2017. More than 6,600 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in January 2018, according to the UN migration agency, and more than 240 people died on the Mediterranean Sea during that month.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Antonio Masiello/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press
Refugees and migrants get off a fishing boat at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in October 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images
Migrants step over dead bodies while being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya in October 2016. Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis was on a Spanish rescue boat that encountered several crowded migrant boats. Messinis said the rescuers counted 29 dead bodies -- 10 men and 19 women, all between 20 and 30 years old. "I've (seen) in my career a lot of death," he said. "I cover war zones, conflict and everything. I see a lot of death and suffering, but this is something different. Completely different."
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Authorities stand near the body of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey, in September 2015. Alan, his brother and their mother drowned while fleeing Syria. This photo was shared around the world, often with a Turkish hashtag that means "Flotsam of Humanity."
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Migrants board a train at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, after the station was reopened in September 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
GEORGI LICOVSKI/EPA/LANDOV
Children cry as migrants in Greece try to break through a police cordon to cross into Macedonia in August 2015. Thousands of migrants -- most of them fleeing Syria's bitter conflict -- were stranded in a no-man's land on the border.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Alexis Malagaris/Samos Divers Association via AP
The Kusadasi Ilgun, a sunken 20-foot boat, lies in waters off the Greek island of Samos in November 2016.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images
Migrants bathe outside near a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse in Subotica, Serbia, in January 2017.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images
A police officer in Calais, France, tries to prevent migrants from heading for the Channel Tunnel to England in June 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images
A migrant walks past a burning shack in the southern part of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, France, in March 2016. Part of the camp was being demolished -- and the inhabitants relocated -- in response to unsanitary conditions at the site.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
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Migrants stumble as they cross a river north of Idomeni, Greece, attempting to reach Macedonia on a route that would bypass the border-control fence in March 2016.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
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In September 2015, an excavator dumps life vests that were previously used by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
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The Turkish coast guard helps refugees near Aydin, Turkey, after their boat toppled en route to Greece in January 2016.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
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A woman sits with children around a fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni in March 2016.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Darko Bandic/AP
A column of migrants moves along a path between farm fields in Rigonce, Slovenia, in October 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Italian navy via AP Photo
A ship crowded with migrants flips onto its side in May 2016 as an Italian navy ship approaches off the coach of Libya. Passengers had rushed to the port side, a shift in weight that proved too much. Five people died and more than 500 were rescued.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Pierre Crom/Getty Images
Refugees break through a barbed-wire fence on the Greece-Macedonia border in February 2016, as tensions boiled over regarding new travel restrictions into Europe.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Yorgos Karahalis/AP
Policemen try to disperse hundreds of migrants by spraying them with fire extinguishers during a registration procedure in Kos, Greece, in August 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Christian Buttner/EIKON NORD GMBH GERMANY via AP
A member of the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch holds a migrant baby who drowned following the capsizing of a boat off Libya in May 2016.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Boris Grdanoski/AP
A migrant in Gevgelija, Macedonia, tries to sneak onto a train bound for Serbia in August 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Emilio Morenatti/AP
Migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the Mediterranean from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, in August 2016.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Gregorio Borgia/AP
Refugees rescued off the Libyan coast get their first sight of Sardinia as they sail in the Mediterranean Sea toward Cagliari, Italy, in September 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
ARGIRIS MANTIKOS/AFP/Getty Images
Local residents and rescue workers help migrants from the sea after a boat carrying them sank off the island of Rhodes, Greece, in April 2015.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Rex Features via AP
Investigators in Burgenland, Austria, inspect an abandoned truck that contained the bodies of refugees who died of suffocation in August 2015. The 71 victims -- most likely fleeing war-ravaged Syria -- were 60 men, eight women and three children.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images
Syrian refugees sleep on the floor of a train car taking them from Macedonia to the Serbian border in August 2015. How to help the ongoing migrant crisis
Some destinations are more popular than others
Three out of five Syrians seeking asylum in Europe are in Germany, Sweden or Serbia. Relatively large numbers of Syrians also have sought asylum in Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Denmark.
Among the European countries receiving the fewest asylum requests are Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Iceland.
Hardly any have found refuge in wealthy Gulf states
Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain have been criticized for resettling no Syrian refugees despite similarities of language, religion and culture.
Human rights groups say the Gulf states, their wealth reflected in skyscrapers and upscale shopping malls, have plenty of resources to resettle Syrian refugees. Some in the Gulf states point out that they have contributed tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian relief for displaced Syrians.
The United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, has been welcoming, receiving and extending residency permits to more than 100,000 Syrian nationals since 2011, a UAE government source told CNN.
The United States is resettling more Syrian refugees
The United States has resettled 1,500 Syrian refugees since the start of the conflict in 2011, the vast majority of them this year.
That amounts to about 0.03% of Syria’s 4.1 million refugees.
Here’s a breakdown: 23 in 2011, 41 in 2012, 45 in 2013, 249 in 2014 and 1,199 so far this fiscal year, which ends September 30, according to the State Department.
About 300 more refugees are expected to be admitted by the end of the month, according to U.S. officials.
In the face of growing questions about such small numbers, President Barack Obama ordered his administration to “scale up” the number of Syrian refugees – at least 10,000 in the next fiscal year.
