According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, among the over 19.5 million refugees across the globe by the end of 2014, the majority were from the Middle East, where at least 8.9 million have fled their war-torn homelands.

By this month, about 4.1 million people from Syria had been registered and granted temporary protection mainly in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Iran, which respectively host at least 1.6 million, 1.1 million, and 980,000 refugees from the region. In contrast, only 500,000 (and counting) Middle East refugees have entered the European Union, but that has already made many member states balk.

It requires a considerable sum of money to accommodate and employ these refugees, let alone guarantee their children's education. The influx of a variety of Middle East refugees has also given rise to political disparities within the countries that plan to take them in, as well as latent risks with regard to local security and interracial exchanges.