When this happens, we become refugees. Or if not you, then someone close to you. Think about it. Most refugees never imagined they would be the ones driven from their homes and forced to flee, but it happened to them, and it can happen to you or me. It is difficult to quantify the exact number of people who are refugees and internally displaced in our world today.
Statistics tell only part of the story.
These totals don't take into account those who do not meet the UN criteria for political refugees or the hundreds of thousands of people displaced due to hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. Suffice it to say, it is a global problem of immense proportions. SNIs program activity in 1998 focused on Tajikistan , Afghanistan and Burundi. Tajikistan is a country still recovering from the civil war of 1992 - 1993. The war killed many thousands of civilians and destroyed one out of every 10 homes.