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Our modern-day definitions of displaced people emerged during the Cold War as a product of anti-communism.

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There are 23 million people around the world displaced from the only homes they've ever known.

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking in Geneva in honor of International Human RIghts Day cited the need to: Build a new social and economic system with human rights and justice at its core. Deliver climate justice and a better way to live together on this planet. Recognise the humanity of refugees and offer them a place of safety. Work for peace, security and understanding. The survival of our common humanity requires nothing less.

Fleeing rape, torture and mass killing, Burmese Rohingya arrive in this camp of half a million souls, traumatized by the military operation to ‘cleanse’ Myanmar of Muslims.

A country that hasn’t had a civil war in more than 150 years, where secessionist movements from Texas to Vermont have generally caused merriment not concern, now faces divisions so serious, and a civilian arsenal of weapons so huge, that the possibility of national disintegration has become part of mainstream conversation. Indeed, after the 2016 elections, predicting a second civil war in the United States has become all the rage across the political spectrum.

Europeans who think the current crisis is unique forget that between 1845 and 1848, 1.5 to 2 million Irish fled their famine-blackened land (while another million or more starved to death) in large part due to the same kind of economics Europe is currently trying to force on countries like Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Cyprus. Today, the migrants are from Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, but the policies are the same.