Syria's refugee crisis: How the human race is heading for an epic fail ... again Al Za'atri camp in Jordan is experiencing water shortages, disease and a crime wave. Picture: AFP/Getty images. A. Humanitarian. Disaster. Of. Epic. Proportions. That's the prediction. But is anyone listening? A country is "haemorrhaging" people who are fleeing with "little more than the clothes on their backs." Already it is "the biggest refugee crisis of this century" and the "biggest displacement crisis of all time," says the United Nations, adding it is "nothing less than alarming." And now, finally, the UN has admitted it. The refugee crisis currently flowing out of Syria "is the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide almost 20 years ago." I had been watching the news reports of the exodus from Syria with growing alarm and a sense of awful deja vu. As people pour in their hundreds over the border, the countries they're fleeing to are staggering under the weight of the influx of people. And if the big picture warnings from the UN this week aren't dire enough, there are the cold hard statististics facing aid agencies on the ground. Refugees are flowing over the border in their hundreds into camps or makeshift dwellings where there is not enough water, not enough food and the sanitation systems are failing. Disease is on the rise, death looms. Aid authorities are getting less than half the money they are begging for. News reporters and politicians are more focused on more potential strife in the region - US air strikes, which will only intensify the flight from a country which has already seen a quarter of its population flee their homes. Having witnessed the last occasion on which this happened, the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1994, it's hard to imagine it could end in anything but tears. Rwanda started as an internal civilian conflict which turned into a mass exodus of refugees. The scenes from Rwanda and the central African countries into which the disaster spilled stunned the world. Vast camps across a sprawling African plain, as far as the eye could see, were filled with desperate people and when cholera and typhoid tore through the inhabitants, the bodies began piling up. Men, women and children, barely covered in only woven mats as their coffins, lay about in rows up and down the camps. Shocked viewers around the world sent in money to aid organisations, but for many Rwandan refugees it was too late. After Rwanda, it was said: never again could human beings stand aside and let that happen. But right now in Syria and the surrounding regions all the signs are pointing to the repetition of an epic fail by the human race. These are the five reasons why you should care. A UNICEF worker above Quru Gusik refugee camp in Kurdish northern Iraq. Picture: EPA Source: NewsComAu When the United Nations says listen up, listen up The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, says the number of Syrians who have fled their homes has risen to 6.25 million, the largest refugee group of any country in the world and the "biggest displacement of all time." UNHCR says one person escapes across Syria's borders every 15 seconds and approximately half of those displaced are children. UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, said displacement of Syrians was "unparalleled in recent history." "Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history," he said. The outflow of Syrians has intensified in the past week, following news of a possible US military intervention. The UNHCR has called for "massive international support," saying aid agencies are "worryingly underfunded." and humanitarian groups within Syria are getting less than half the funds needed to meet basic requirements of the displaced. In June, it asked world governments for $3 billion to pay for it. It got $1.2 billion. So far, humanitarian agencies working in Syria are only getting 47 per cent of funds required to meet basic refugee needs. In 1994, early warnings of the genocide in Rwanda were ignored by politicians and policy makers because the conflict was deemed a "civil war" and not worthy of intervention. Now the US looks likely to intervene in another civil war, for very different reasons, and the UN says the world is allowing another great human catastrophe to take place. Child among the dead in a refugee camp in Goma, Zaire, in 1994. Picture: News Limited. The world doesn't need another Rwanda Remember Rwanda? If you were too young, ask your parents, but 19 years ago the exodus in April 1994 of more than two million people from the tiny neighbouring central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi followed a wave of genocidal attacks by the ruling Hutu majority upon their ethnic rivals, the Tutsis. After whipping up hatred against the Tutsi "cockroaches" and carrying out mass killings with machetes - in one notorious massacre, more than 5000 Tutsis sheltering in a church were slaughtered by their neighbours - the Hutus fled. Over the border they poured into neighbouring countries, only to die in frightening numbers in vast filthy camps where the confluence of people, lack of water and sanitation caused waves of cholera, typhoid and other disease. The deaths peaked at 1000 a day and the volcanic rock on which the camps lay meant troops and aid workers were unable to dig graves and bodies began to line up, prompting one UN representative to call the scenes "a revision of hell." Bodies lay around the camps rolled in woven mats and rotting in the heat. When confronting scenes of the carnage beamed in from Africa into people's living rooms, viewers around the world were hugely traumatised and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars and swore it should never happen again. German Red Cross workers load relief supplies for a hospital at a refugee camp in Jordan. Disease, hunger and what's to come A shortage of water, poor sanitation and hunger among crowded, weakened refugees is the perfect recipe for the spread of disease. And when disease takes control in a refugee camp, the occupants start dying like flies. Hepatitis, tuberculosis (TB), lung and gut infections are already spreading in the camps, with aid groups desperately trying to vaccinate refugees in particular the children. According to New Scientist, the "mass migration" is already changing the world's "disease landscape." Jordan has called off plans to eliminate tuberculosis, which had previously virtually been wiped out. The lethal MERS virus has appeared in some of the camps and Leishmaniasis, also known as "Baghdad boil," is a disfiguring skin parasite spread by desert sandflies which is on the rise inside Syria.. Within Syria, public health services have broken down and health workers struggle to supply vaccines. In the Kurdish area of Northern Iraq, refugees continue to flow in and find accommodation in cramped makeshift shacks where there is not enough clean water or sanitation facilities. Cholera epidemics are most common in September, putting pressure on UNHCR to organise the vaccination of the steady influx of people. While, the UN is working with agencies like the Red Cross and Red Crescent to provide shelter, security, food, and water, resources are stretched thin, and the approach of winter and increasing refugee numbers have many aid organisations fearful about what is to come. Syrians flow over the Iraq border Picture: UNHCR. Think of the humanity They have lost their houses, their neighbourhoods and, in many cases, their loved ones. Up to a quarter of Syria's population has been uprooted from their homes. It wasn't just bombs and fighting between insurgents, but the diminishing power supply, deteroriating services and the disappearance of police which made them flee, many travelling hundreds of miles with very young children and the few possessions they could carry. And while they yearn to go home - even to bombed or ruined houses - the truth is some of them may end up living in refugee camps for decades. Babies are being born with refugee status and no real claim upon their nationality, unless they return to Syria. Aid agencies try to provide these people with sustenance and psychological and emotional support services, but their situation remains desperate: they are poor, homeless, jobless, and without much hope for their near future In some camps, only ten per cent of children have been able to continue their schooling and only 20 per cent of traumatised children have received counselling. The International Committee of the Red Cross has reported chronic shortages of crucial medical supplies and "essential services such as food assistance, education, a more reliable water supply system and shelter continue to be seriously underfunded," says Amnesty International. Al Za'atri refugee camp is now in Jordan's fourth-largest city. Think what it means to other countries Refugee camps the size of cities are springing up in what were once just fields in the neighbouring countries bearing the brunt of the Syrian influx. The Al Za'atri refugee camp near the Syrian border is now Jordan's fourth largest city and UN data suggests the Syrian refugee population currently stands at 716,000 in Lebanon, 515,000 in Jordan, 460,000 in Turkey, 168,000 in Iraq and 110,000 in Egypt. With the threat of US air strikes and revenge chemical weapons attacks by rebel forces on the Syrian government, these numbers are likely to grow, placing incredible pressure upon the economies and resources of the host countries. The UNHCR said these countries are carrying an "overwhelming burden" and have started placing various restrictions on entry. There is increasing domestic frustration at the economic, political, security, infrastructural and social repercussions of this colossal influx, UNHCR said. It released a statement by its special envoy to Syria, US film star Angelina Jolie, after she visited camps in Jordan: "If the situation continues to deteriorate at this rate, the number of refugees will only grow, and some neighbouring countries could be brought to the point of collapse." The influx has swollen Jordan's population by 10 per cent. The country expects a million refugees by the end of the year, a third in camps, yet barely has enough water for its own people. "Public water supply systems are under severe stress," the UNHCR said. Tensions between refugees and Jordanians are rising. Al Za'atri has now stopped taking new arrivals. Trucking in 3.4 million litres of water daily was too expensive to continue, and "lower sanitation standards may be the only option." Theft is rampant in the camp and refugees are digging toilets to avoid using dark latrine blocks at night, because there are insufficient funds for solar lighting.