Number of displaced people rising sharply

Cape Town 09-06-20 World Refugee Day March to Parliament. Picture Brenton Geach

Cape Town 09-06-20 World Refugee Day March to Parliament. Picture Brenton Geach

Published Jun 20, 2016

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CONFLICT and persecution caused global forced displacement to escalate sharply in 2015, reaching the highest level ever recorded and representing immense human suffering, according to a report released by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

UNHCR’s annual Global Trends report, which tracks forced displacement worldwide, based on data from government partners, including the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the organisation’s own reporting, said 65.3 million people were displaced as of the end of 2015, compared to 59.5 million just 12 months earlier. This is the first time the threshold of 60 million has been crossed.

The total of 65.3 million comprises 3.2 million people in industrialised countries who as of end 2015 were awaiting decisions on asylum (the largest total UNHCR has recorded), 21.3 million refugees worldwide (1.8 million more than in 2014 and the highest refugee total since the early 1990s) and 40.8 million people who had been forced to flee their homes, but were within the confines of their own countries (an increase of 2.6 million from 2014 and the highest 
number on record).

Measured against Earth’s 7.349 billion population, these numbers mean that one in every 113 people globally is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee – a level of risk for which UNHCR knows no precedent.

Forced displacement has been on the rise since at least the mid-1990s in most regions, but over the past five years the rate has increased.

“More people are being displaced by war and persecution, and that’s worrying in itself, but the factors that endanger refugees are multiplying too,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

“At sea, a frightening number of refugees and migrants are dying each year; on land, people fleeing war are finding their way blocked by closed borders. Politics is gravitating against asylum in some countries. The willingness of nations to work together not just for refugees but for the collective human interest is what’s being tested today, and it’s this spirit of unity that badly needs to prevail.”

Syria at 4.9 million, Afghanistan at 2.7  million and Somalia at 1.1 million together accounted for more than half the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate worldwide.

Colombia at 6.9 million, Syria at 6.6 million and Iraq at 4.4 million meanwhile had the largest number of internally displaced people.

Yemen was the biggest producer of new internal displacement in 2015 – 2.5 million people, or 9% of its population.

Children constituted 51% of the world’s refugees in 2015.

Worryingly, many were separated from their parents or travelling alone. In all there were 98 400 asylum requests from children unaccompanied or separated from their
families.

This is the highest total UNHCR has seen and a tragic reflection of how global forced displacement is disproportionately affecting young lives.

l Released by the UNHCR

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