This newsletter is the second of six weekly editions in a series about homelessness, vagrancy, nomadic lifestyle, human emigration, and definitions of freedom.

Click here to read Plight of the Unbound - Part I

How does somebody become homeless? Everybody is born into some kind of structure, usually a family unit. Even orphans find themselves being cared for by somebody. So, how do people wind up without shelter?

There are simple explanations.

The easiest way to become homeless is for your wife to kick you out of the house. Then you go to stay with your buddy, but then his wife kicks you out of her house. So, you try to sleep in the back room where you work, but the boss won’t go for that, so you get fired and evicted at the same time. Then you check with some friends about staying with them and somebody comes and picks you up and drops you off at the local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Then you find out the 12-step program is Christian based and that these people have no sense of humor when it comes to their sobriety - so they send you to a rehabilitation facility. But then, you don’t have money to pay for rehabilitation and nobody you know will pay for you either, so they kick you out. Since you haven’t broken any laws or threatened anyone you don’t get locked up in jail or a mental ward, and you end up with no place to go, so you’re homeless. It is as simple as that.

This is just one example.

Let’s take a look at the fastest ways to become homeless.

Fire. Flood. Tornado. Your house is gone and it only took seconds. You are lucky to be alive. Your whole community may be gone, including the place you worked. You may end up living in a tent for a while, waiting for insurance to pay out so you can rebuild. If you were a renter you probably won’t be getting an insurance payout because if you could have afforded renter’s insurance you would have bought a house instead. At least you did not lose a house you owned. You can go rent somewhere else. You can find another job and rebuild your life.

Maybe.

Depending on your skillset, employers needs, and your ability to provide proof of past employment and a way to contact references who may be impossible to reach because their phones are disconnected or they died in the same tragedy you just survived, you may not be able to get a job. If you had a vehicle it may be gone. You may only have the clothes you wear and a will to survive.

For refugees who run from poverty, war, slavery, racism, famine or drought, this is a reality. They are homeless.

Their trail is blazed by circumstances which are beyond their control and terminates in absolute misfortune. The odds were against them. It is as simple as that.

Did you know that 1 in every 74 people on the planet have been forced to leave their homes? Click the link below to see the statistics. Spend some time and learn some stuff.

108,400,000 people is a lot of people.

That population is more people than the world’s three largest cities (Tokyo 37M, Delhi 29M, Shanghai 26M) combined. To put it in terms that are closer to home for a lot of you, that is roughly equal to everyone living in the Central and Mountain Standard Time Zones of the USA. That means everyone in Texas, all the way up to Montana, over to Minnesota, and everywhere in between. It is about the entire population of the Philippines.

That is a lot of people. It is important to contemplate this staggering number by comparing to other populations to really understand how many people that is. Equating it to grains of sand or Milky Way bars or a million dollars worth of pennies does not do it justice.

One hundred eight million people seeking refuge is mind-blowing. They all need food and shelter. They should be able to find a way to achieve permanence. A place to stay and build a life.

Cox's Bazar District in Bangladesh is home to 920,000 Rohingya refugees who have been chased out of Myanmar for no other reason than being Muslim. This is the largest refugee camp in the world. It is about the same population as Columbus, Ohio. Now, just take a minute to think about that and do some math with me. Maybe you haven’t been to Columbus, but you have probably been to a city with around a million people. This is a city of homeless people who represent less than 1% of all the homeless people on Earth.

The other 99% are quite literally, almost everywhere. People are spread across the globe who have run from tragedies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, the Horn of Africa, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, throughout Central America, and many other places.

Let’s focus on the Rohingya for a moment. These people been run out of their homes due to war and prejudice and are now tightly packed into camps in Rakhine state in Northwest Myanmar and Bangladesh. They have languished there for the last few years. Then, Cyclone Mocha tore through the territory last month, bringing death, destruction, and even more misery to what must feel like an already hopeless existence.

These poor folks can’t catch a break. They ran from one tragedy to become sitting ducks for another. Now the Myanmar junta is stopping aid from getting to them to bolster the genocide of these people.

That is just insane. What did they do to deserve such hate? Nothing.

While refuge in Rahkine state and Bangladesh is something, nearby India is not particularly welcoming to the Rohingya. Neither are a lot of places. This article from Doctors Without Borders helps to visual their plight. The Rohingya have been seeking refuge in Cox’s Bazar for 30 years.

The United Nations recognizes this as genocide but even here, at the highest authority on the planet, the wheels of justice move slow and nothing seems to help those who need it most.

World Refugee Day was June 20th. This designation by the UN is meant to create awareness and honor refugees worldwide. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) works to get help to refugees in need. Their annual budget is over $8 billion US dollars. Yet, Cox’s Bazar is packed.

All these numbers simply prove the immensity of the problem. If you spend 8 billion dollars every year on 100 million people, that is only $800 per person. It does not go far.

But is the United Nations part of the problem?

The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States, formulated by the United States, in fact, after World War II. It says that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council has five permanent members—the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—collectively known as the P5. Any one of them can veto a resolution. The Security Council's ten elected members, which serve two-year, nonconsecutive terms, are not afforded veto power.

Is that a loophole for war?

Look at Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan, which have all been attacked by Russian forces. If the UN says Russia can’t use force without permission of the Security Council, and Russia (one of the P5) is on the Security Council, who enforces the integrity of the Security Council to make Russia stand down? And why has the UN not stepped in to protect the Rohingya from persecution instead of only scolding the Myanmar junta well after crimes are committed?

In recent years Russia has also lent support to African nations Mali and Libya under the guise of security to plunder their natural resources via the Wagner mercenary group, which helps fund the war in Ukraine. Wagner is a gangster operation that robs people, not just to enrich themselves, but to pay tribute to Vladimir Putin. I hear that Wagner group and Putin had a bit of kerfuffle today, but they worked it out. Putin gave Yevgeny Prigozhin the country of Belarus as an end of fiscal year bonus, or maybe in exchange for not killing him. However that concluded, it was just business.

But it is not just business for the people whose lives they destroyed.

Seeking asylum from war is just one aspect of the many ways people become refugees. Violence will push most anyone to change their behavior. Scare anyone enough to move and they will.

The problems created by people who insist on pushing other people out of the way are truly complex. People cause more problems for other people than natural disasters ever do. At least it seems that way.

I will cover numerous other details about this next week, but, once again, it comes down to one thing. The main reason to push anyone else around, which dovetails with hate, is money.

It is as simple as that.

Thanks for reading.

CLICK HERE TO READ Plight of the Unbound - Part III

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.