Filipiniana News – September 2015 RHYME & REASON Refugees and Migrants It took one heartbreaking photo of the lifeless three-year old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, for the world to suddenly pay attention to a bloodbath which had in fact been going on for years. Prior to this, it seemed that the rest of the world is just content in passively watching if not ignoring the massive exodus of people from Syria and several other countries in Africa and the Middle East caused by widespread persecution, social and political unrest, extreme poverty and other systemic problems within those countries. While the recent collective awakening and outpouring of compassion and support is a welcome development, this had also been giving rise to a lot of confusion, misinformation, fear and paranoia owing to the very complex origins of the crisis, varying perspectives and wide range of human emotions and experiences involved. For one, people tend to conflate "refugees" a