The number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world reached a record figure of 89.3 million people at the end of 2021, but in 2022 this group has already exceeded 100 million due to conflicts such as the one in Ukraine, indicated this Thursday the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
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Conflicts, persecution, violence and human rights violations caused the number of refugees and internally displaced persons to increase for the tenth consecutive year in 2021so this group has doubled compared to a decade ago, when it did not reach 43 million.
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“If we don’t take action to deal with these figures out of desperation and find lasting solutions, we will continue to break new and terrible records,” said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, at the conference.
press release in which he presented the report.
This report is published each year on the eve of World Refugee Day (June 20) and counts both refugees (people fleeing from their country to others) and internally displaced persons in nations shaken by conflict, violence or (in the case
of Venezuelans) serious crises.
Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan
The largest refugee groups at the end of last year were those from Syria (6.8 million), Venezuela (4.6 million, although adding the migrants they exceed 6.1 million) and Afghanistan (2.7 million).
To these figures must be added this year that of the almost 5 million Ukrainians who have fled to other countries, mainly from the rest of Europe, since the Russian invasion that began at the end of February.
As for the countries of destination, Turkey continues to be the one that hosts the most refugees (3.8 million, mostly from Syria)followed by Colombia (1.8 million, mainly Venezuelans), Uganda (1.5 million from the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Pakistan (1.5 million Afghans).
In fifth place is the first developed country on the list, Germany (1.3 million), according to a report that highlights that 83% of the world’s refugees, almost one in ten, are hosted in countries Developing.
The United States was the country that received the most asylum applications last year (188,000), followed by Germany (148,000), Mexico (131,000), Costa Rica (108,000), France (89,000) and Spain (65,000).
Minors, big affected
UNHCR denounced in its report that children are among the main victims of this exodus, since they represent 30% of the refugee population and 42% of those suffering from internal displacement.
Last year, on the other hand, 5.3 million internally displaced persons and 429,000 refugees returned home, and 57,500 entered resettlement programs (from
one initial host country to another), two-thirds more than in 2020.
The report is published at a time of intense controversy over the British attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, thanks to an agreement signed between London and Kigali in April that has been highly criticized by international bodies, including the UNHCR.
That agreement is a “mistake” that could set “catastrophic precedents,” Grandi said at the presentation of the report, stressing that “it is basically a transfer of responsibilities from a country with structures and resources to another, Rwanda (…), which doesn’t have the structures for this particular task.”
Grandi warned that many countries in Africa, the Americas and other regions hosting large refugee populations “could be tempted to do the same thing as the UK”, something he said “could make UNHCR’s job very difficult”.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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