They make up more than 1 percent of the world’s population. If they were the population of one country, it would have been the sixteenth most populous country in the world—before Germany. This week, the UN refugee agency UNHCR announced that has crossed the 100 million refugees barrier for the first time† With the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians gave the last push towards the nine numbers. UNHCR has eight million internally displaced Ukrainians and six million compatriots who fled across the border. In addition to Ukraine, many people fled Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Congo. UNHCR cites armed conflict, violence, human rights violations, corona, disasters, extreme weather and other effects of climate change as the main causes.
In 1990 there were 40 million refugees, and ten years ago there were 43 million too
It is not just about people with official refugee status. Asylum seekers also count, as do people who have been displaced in their own country. And then there are the stateless – people who are not considered citizens of any country.
Internally displaced persons are by far the largest group. Earlier this month, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) announced that by 2021 global 59.1 million people have fled within their own country – also a record. This is without the eight million Ukrainians who have sought shelter in their own country since the end of February.
China tops the list, with more than six million internally displaced persons. This is a high number, but also not so remarkable: they are all victims of the floods, cyclones and earthquakes that hit China every year. A large proportion of this group of displaced persons can return home every year. The list of permanently displaced persons includes people who have fled known conflicts in, for example, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan and Congo.
Millions of Colombians
A striking group is formed by the more than five million Colombians, a number that has been stable for years: in 2009 Colombia already had 4.9 million internally displaced persons.
Six years after the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC, the violence continues. There is also criminal violence, with paramilitary groups working with local gangs to control drug trafficking routes. This violence seems to have increased since the peace agreement, according to the IDMC: the absence of the FARC and the lack of an effective presence of the Colombian state has created a power vacuum. A neighboring country of Colombia also stands out: the Venezuelans are the second largest refugee population in the world after the Syrians.
Eight out of ten cross-border refugees come from just ten countries. And more than half of them are hosted in just ten countries. The record holder for ‘reception in the region’ is Turkey, with 3.7 million refugees. The numbers two to five form a colorful list: Colombia (1.7 million international refugees within the national borders), Uganda, Pakistan and Germany (1.2 million). In almost three quarters of the cases, refugees are in a country neighboring the country they come from. And that neighboring country is usually a developing country.
Two thousand times a full Kuip
One hundred million refugees – almost two thousand times a full Kuip – is, in the words of UNHCR boss Filippo Grandi, a “record that should never have been set”. Ten years ago there were 42.7 million. That number had been fairly stable for more than twenty years: in 1990 UNHCR numbered 40 million†
The British weekly The Economist attempted in 2015, when many Syrians fled to Europe, compare the number of refugees historically† The record year so far was 1992, according to the weekly, with some 17 million official refugees. Now there are 26 million (excluding asylum seekers and displaced persons).
Another way of comparing is to count refugees from one conflict. For example, the number of refugees and displaced people immediately after the Second World War is estimated at fifteen million; the number of Ukrainians displaced and displaced by 2022 (fourteen million) is close.
The Ukrainians are on a par with the displaced by the partition of India in 1947. Some well-known conflicts have displaced far fewer people. For example, Israel expelled 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, 200,000 Hungarians fled in 1956, and the wars in the Balkans produced 1.2 million refugees in the 1990s.
The number of Syrian refugees and displaced persons is almost equal to the number of Ukrainian refugees. That is a total of 13.6 million. The big difference is that Ukraine reached its number in three months, and Syria in eleven years.
It is “very difficult to predict” whether the number of refugees will increase further, says professor of economic and social history Marlou Schrover of Leiden University. “Predictions of the number of refugees are never correct. Take climate change, for example: will it lead to more migration in the future, or will more people die in their own country?”
Even on the question of whether there will be fewer refugees when the economy is improving, scientists disagree, Schrover said. “One study says: economic growth means more money to make the crossing. The other says: more money means more reason to stay. The difference is hope – if they have hope, they stay even when things go bad. But that cannot be predicted.”
Also read: ‘The Syrians on Lesvos are also in our region, aren’t they?’
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 28, 2022
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