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From MISNAJune 18, 2009
The number of uprooted people worldwide in 2008 was 42-million, according to the
Global Trends annual report of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR). Of the 42-million uprooted people, 15.2 million-were refugees,
26-million were internally displaced people and 827,000 asylum seekers; based on
the report, 80% of the world’s refugees and a great majority of the displaced
are in developing nations.
Despite the 42-million marked a drop of about 700,000 from 2007, provisional
data on 2009, not represented in the report, indicates a change in this trend:
“In 2009, we have already seen substantial new displacements, namely in
Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia”, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio
Guterres.
“While some displacements may be short-lived, others can take years and even
decades to resolve. We continue to face several longer-term internal
displacement situations in places like Colombia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic
of the Congo and Somalia. Each of these conflicts has also generated refugees
who flee beyond their borders”.
The report highlights some 5.7 million refugees “living in limbo”, with no
immediate solutions in sight, including 29 separate groups of 25,000 or more
refugees in 22 states exiled for five or more years. In 2008, some 2 million
refugees and internally displaced were repatriated, which was the second lowest
level of returnees for 15 years. Refugee repatriation, which was 604,000, was
down 17 percent. Displaced people’s returns were down by 34 percent at
1.4-million people. The decline in part reflects deteriorating security
conditions, namely in Afghanistan and Sudan.
“This is an indication that the large-scale repatriation movements observed in
the past have decelerated”, the report says, noting that an estimated 11-million
refugees have returned home over the past 10 years, most of them with UNHCR
assistance. UNHCR proposed 121,000 individuals for resettlement to third
countries in 2008 and more than 67,000 departed to their new homelands with the
agency’s help; of the global total of uprooted people, UNHCR cares for
25-million, including a record 14.4-million internally displaced – up from
13.7-million in 2007 - and 10.5-million refugees. The other 4.7-million refugees
are Palestinians under the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
In recent years, UNHCR has increasingly been tasked under the UN's humanitarian
reform process with providing help to the internally displaced, in addition to
its traditional mandate of protecting and assisting refugees who have crossed
international borders. Since 2005, the agency has seen the number of internally
displaced it cares for more than double. According to the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre (IDMC), the global total of internally displaced has stood at
about 26-million for the past two years. No single agency has responsibility for
all of them, but the UN has introduced a “cluster approach” in which individual
organizations are assigned roles in displacement situations based on their
expertise.
For UNHCR, that means coordination of protection, camp management and shelter.
Colombia has one of the world's largest internally displaced populations, with
estimates of some 3-million. Iraq had some 2.6-million internally displaced at
the end of 2008 – with 1.4-million of them displaced in the past three years
alone. There were more than 2-million internally displaced persons in Sudan’s
Darfur region. Renewed armed conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the
Congo and in Somalia last year brought total displacement in each to 1.5-million
and 1.3-million respectively. Kenya saw extensive new internal displacement
early in the year, while armed conflict in Georgia forced another 135,000 people
from their homes.
Other increases in displacement in 2008 were in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
and Yemen. The refugee population under UNHCR's mandate last year dropped for
the first time since 2006 because of voluntary repatriation and because of the
downward revision in estimates of refugees and people in "refugee-like
situations" from Iraq and Colombia. The 2008 refugee figure was 10.5-million,
down from 11.4-million in 2007. But the number of asylum seekers making
individual claims rose for a second year, to 839,000 – up 28 percent. South
Africa (207,000) was the largest single recipient of individual claims, followed
by the United States (49,600 – UNHCR estimate), France (35,400) and Sudan
(35,100).
Developing countries hosted 80 percent of all refugees, underscoring the
disproportionate burden carried by those least able to afford it as well as the
need for international support. Major refugee-hosting countries in 2008 included
Pakistan (1.8-million); Syria (1.1-million); Iran (980,000); Germany (582,700),
Jordan (500,400); Chad (330,500); Tanzania (321,900); and Kenya (320,600). Major
countries of origin included Afghanistan (2.8-million) and Iraq (1.9-million),
which together account for 45 percent of all refugees under UNHCR's
responsibility. Other countries of origin included Somalia (561,000); Sudan
(419,000); Colombia, including people in refugee-like situations (374,000), and
DR-Congo (368,000).
