Flavia Pansieri

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, sleep on the ground at the Bajed Kadal refugee camp in southwest Dohuk province on August 23, 2014.

A former UN relief coordinator says Iraqi and Syrian refugees pose the biggest humanitarian crisis of our generation

September 1, 2014Conflict

Jan Egeland says the current crisis caused by the Syrian civil war affects far more people than the notorious violence in Rwanda and the Balkans more than a decade ago. And the former UN official says no nation is addressing it — from the West to the Arab World, or powers like China and Russia.