It was one paragraph on the back page of my newspaper, out of proportion to the human suffering about to take place. I had to look on the internet to find out more. The Kenyan government had ordered the United Nations to close the Dadaab refugee camp, home to almost 400,000 Somalian exiles.

You may never have heard of Dadaab, probably most people haven’t. It is a place of refuge for Somali people fleeing civil war in their homeland. It is the world’s largest refugee camp, growing by thousands each week. It is a place with not much hope.

Those of us who live in comfort don’t think about refugees who are literally out of sight and out of mind. I didn’t know much about Dadaab before my wife went their five years ago, to spend a few weeks doing teacher training. Yes, there are schools in refugee camps, as the aid agencies try to provide hope, or at least education, for the next generation. It is a challenging situation, to say he least, dealing with children who have been through so much. The needs are immense, the resources never enough.

Yesterday the Kenyan government clarified their position somewhat. They still want Dadaab closed, but they won’t be forcing its inhabitants back across the border. There had been speculation that the Kenyan military was going to be given that task.

The Kenyans want the camp closed because they don’t want it to become permanent. They look at the Middle East where camps for Palestinian refugees that were established in 1948 are still in operation, those residents (and their descendants) still not having returned home.

More importantly though, the Kenyans want Dadaab closed because it has become a prime recruiting ground for the Al Shabaab terrorist organization that last month attacked a Kenyan school, killing 148 people. The attacker had been residents of Dadaab. Refugee camps the world over, so filled with hopelessness, are prime locations for extremist recruiters who are able to offer, if not hope, something more than an endless life in a tent waiting for something to change.

Those in Dadaab fled Somalia in fear of their lives. I don’t recall hearing that the situation there has improved at all. Why would they return? The same hold true of the millions who have been displaced by the civil war and ISIS battles in Syria and Iraq. They choose the refugee camps not because they want to be there, but because the alternative is death.

In North America we don’t think all that much about the situation It may be on the television news, or in the newspaper, but we move on to the next news item pretty quickly. It doesn’t impact us because it isn’t local – and local events hit us hardest. That is just human nature. It is the same with natural disasters – the relief efforts following last week’s Nepalese earthquake are on everyone’s mind. The ongoing reconstruction of Haiti following the 2010 earthquake there is something that is rarely mentioned.

We have a refugee crisis worldwide, whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not. Those of us in areas unaffected by the conflicts that created the human exodus, as nations, as governments, as individuals, need to give serious consideration to how we are going to respond.