Syrian Refugee with googleVis

In a previous post I showed the timeline of refugees leaving Syria for other countries.  The number of refugees leaving Syria is remarkable.  Understanding the strain this presents on countries is difficult to grasp.  Below I've attempted to visualize the population and proportion of refugees each of these countries hosts.  The tree map below shows the number of refugees (color:  red (lower) - green (higher) ) when compared between countries and the relative size of the host country (population) being represented by square size in the plot.  To the right of the tree map is a sankey diagram showing the relative volume of refugees in different countries in different times.  Notice how the volume to Lebanon increases dramatically from 2012 to 2013.

Though the number of refugees would strain any countries' economy, Lebanon is experiencing a unique proportion of the burden in this regard.  The number of refugees has had a considerable impact on the overall population percentage of the country.  The weight of hosting this many refugees is particularly straining to Lebanese laborers, rent prices, and other resources of the country.  

Syria Timeline

The UNHCR has provided a portal for tracking when refugees have left Syria and where they have gone.  The display of data in the graph below is in no way endorsed by the UNHCR, but was aggregated from their portal

As seen in a previous post, neighboring countries and specifically Lebanon has played a significant role in the process of relocating refugees.  The flow of people to these countries over time is remarkable considering that the demographics of most refugees entering neighboring countries, over 50% of the refugees are under the age of 18 (validity of this number also available at the UNHCR portal).  The chart below is interactive, but set to a setting that shows the growth over time of refugees from Syria moving to other countries.  You may notice the specific months where this spikes as well.  The data from the portal began in 2011 for the countries being tracked, and at that point some countries were already facilitating camps or other accommodations for Syrian refugees.