The Syrian civil war marked a grim milestone on Wednesday as the number of people who have fled into Lebanon and registered as refugees surpassed one million, according to the United Nations Refugees Agency.

The spiraling conflict that began in March 2011 has killed at least 150,000 people and uprooted more than nine million others. An estimated 1.6 million of them are spread between Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. But it is fragile Lebanon that has by far taken the brunt.

One-quarter of the country’s residents are now Syrian, according to the U.N. There were almost 18,000 refugees in Lebanon in April 2012, about 13 months after the demonstrations, but that swelled to nearly 356,000 as the revolution turned into civil war. Now the organization registers 2,500 refugees each day.

UNHCR
UNHCR

Lebanon’s generally open-door policy for Syrians has immensely strained the tiny country’s political and economic systems, as well as its overall stability. There’s less trade, tourism and investment. Many schools are at full capacity—520,000 of the million refugees are children, but of the 400,000 of them who are school-aged, only 90,000 are in classrooms—and its infrastructure is stretched thin.

Bombings along the border serve as a reminder that even those who leave Syria in search of safety or better opportunities aren’t guaranteed anything.

(MORE: Ordeal of a Dying Child Captures the Tragedy of Syria)

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