More than 110 million people currently live in a situation of displacement or forced exile. This was revealed this Wednesday by the UN in its annual report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Acnur), which sees in that record number an act of “accusation” against the state of the world.
According to the report, the war in Ukraine, the stampede of refugees from Afghanistan and the fighting in Sudan have recently raised these balances unstoppably.
The document, which is published as usual a few days before the celebration of World Refugee Day on June 20, also highlights an unprecedented annual increase since UNHCR was founded in 1951: it passed 89.3 million refugees and displaced at the end of 2021 to 108.4 million at the end of 2022, 19.1 million more.
In the first half of this year the figure has continued to grow to 110 millionmainly due to new crises such as the one in Sudan or deteriorating situations such as those in Burma (Myanmar), according to data presented at a press conference by the UNHCR high commissioner, the Italian Filippo Grandi.
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“The rhetoric that many refugees flee to rich countries is very wrong: in reality it is the opposite,” explained Grandi, who stressed that 76 percent of these people take refuge in low- and middle-income countries, and are also the vast majority (70 percent) are those who flee to nations neighboring their countries of origin.
Those numbers are “a real indictment against the state of our world,” he added.
The countries from which the most people have fled
Of the 108.4 million people who fled their homes in 2022 due to conflict, natural disasters and other crises, UNHCR points out that 62.5 million are internally displaced persons who remain in their country and 35.3 million refugees in other territories.
Added to this are 5.4 million asylum seekers and 5.2 million “people in need of international protection”, a special category of people who do not exactly have refugee status but are in a very similar situation and which mainly groups together Venezuelans established mostly in other countries of America.
“Conflicts are started too quickly and resolved too slowly. The result is devastation, displacement and anguish for these millions of people forcibly uprooted,” Grandi said.
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Turkey is the country that hosts the most refugees (3.6 million, many of them Syrians), followed by Iran with 3.4 million (mostly from Afghanistan) and Colombia with 2.5 million mainly Venezuelan refugees.
At the same time, the country from which more people have fled to others as refugees is Syria with 6.5 million, followed by Ukraine and Afghanistan with 5.6 million each (Acnur came to count up to 8 million Ukrainian refugees in previous months, although it has recently corrected this figure downwards).
In fourth position is Venezuela (5.4 million) and then South Sudan (2.2 million) and Burma (1.2 million), according to the statistics of the end of 2022, where the nearly half a million refugees still did not appear. caused by two months of conflict in Sudan.
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The impact of the war in Ukraine
90 percent of refugees and internally displaced persons come from developing countries, recalls the report that places sub-Saharan Africa as the main region of both origin (27.2 million) and destination (25.3 million) of these people.
Europe is the origin of 9.1 million and the destination of 17.3 million, while 6.1 million refugees and displaced persons originate from America but the continent is, in turn, a place of reception for 6.7 million.
UNHCR highlights in the report that the invasion of Ukraine generated the fastest flow of refugees since World War II, equaling in just twelve months the exodus caused by the first four years of civil war in Syria.
On the positive side, some 6 million people (339,000 refugees and 5.7 million internally displaced persons) were able to return to their homes in 2022, mainly in Ethiopia after the ceasefire reached in Tigray but also in countries such as Burma, Syria, Mozambique or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Conflicts start too quickly and are sought to be resolved too slowly
Grandi highlighted the generosity of many host communities towards refugees and displaced persons, but stated that so far UNHCR has only received a third of the funds it needs for 2023.
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The report also indicated that the United States remains the country that registered the most asylum applications last year (730,400), followed by far by Germany (217,800), Costa Rica (129,500) and Spain (118,800).
The main countries of origin of asylum seekers were Venezuela (264,000), Afghanistan (208,500), Cuba (194,700) and Nicaragua (165,800), according to UNHCR figures.
The situation in Latin America
According to UNHCR, the flow of refugees and people requiring international protection in the American continent increased by 17 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year, which placed its total figure at six million people, most of them of Venezuelan origin.
However, the considerable increase observed last year is not due to a greater exodus of Venezuelans, but to the updating of the estimates of internally displaced persons in Colombia and Peru, which increased by 611,000 and 178,000 people, respectively.
Colombia is the country on the continent that hosts the largest number of refugees or foreigners who must be protected, with 2.5 million people in such situations. They are followed by Peru (976,400) and Ecuador (555,400), according to the agency’s data.
Among the national groups to which the largest number of refugees or people to be protected in America belong are Venezuelans, in fourth place worldwide, with a total of 5.45 million people, behind Syrians (6.54 million), Ukrainians (5.67 million) and Afghans (5.66 million).
According to the Venezuelan authorities, 300,000 nationals have returned to the country since 2018, including 30,000 who participated in the “Vuelva a la Patria” plan promoted by the government.
In the category of internally displaced persons -for the same reasons as refugees, with the difference that they remain within the borders of their countries-, Colombia was the only country in the Americas where more new displacements were registered in 2022. That year, 214,000 people had to leave their homes in Colombia, be it because of violence or catastrophes.
4 out of 5 displaced persons were in just ten countries in 2022
Generally, 4 out of 5 displaced persons were in only ten countries in 2022, with Syria and Colombia as the countries where there are the most internally displaced persons (6.8 million and 6.7 million, respectively).
In terms of asylum applications in the Americas, the claims filed by Venezuelan citizens doubled in 2022, when they reached 264,000, compared to 92,400 in 2021, according to data from
UNHCR.
Applications from citizens of other countries in the Americas also increased last year, which meant an additional 217,000 applications filed in the United States, Costa Rica and Mexico, although the agency noted that a growing number of Latin Americans are also seeking refuge in Spain.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and EFE
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