The current number of people who have been forced to flee their homes is an increase of 5.8m from the year earlier and of more than 50pc in the past five years. The global population of refugees, IDPs and asylum seekers has increased at a rate of 75pc during the last two decades from 37.5m in 1996 to 65.3 in 2015.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, the global forced displacement in 2015 has surpassed the numbers ever recorded since World War II. If the current global population of forcibly displaced people made up their own country it would be the 21st largest nation in the world, greater than the entire population of the United Kingdom and France.
What history and statistics tells us about the world’s refugees, IDPs and asylum seekers
The number of global refugees under the UNHCR mandate had reached 16.1m people at the end of 2015, approximately 1.7m more than the total reported a year earlier. “This increase was driven mainly by the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic, which accounted for more than half of the new refugees in 2015. There were also significant outflows of refugees from Afghanistan, Burundi, and South Sudan. Overall refugee number was reduced through the return of about 201,400 refugees, the resettlement of about 107,100 and the naturalisation of at least 32,000,” states the UNHCR report.
In 2015, 1.2m people were newly displaced worldwide. Approximately 8.6m people were displaced within the borders of their own country, 1.8m became new refugees and about 2.45m applications for asylum or refugee status were submitted to States or UNHCR in 174 countries or territories in 2015, the highest number of applications ever recorded.
Here, Dawn takes a look at the horrific numbers of children, mothers and fathers losing their lives in a desperate bid to escape violence, as noted in a new report entitled, Global Trends, released by UNHCR on World Refugee Day 2016.
Which countries have been the most generous to refugees?
International attention has overwhelmingly been given to Europe’s Mediterranean migrant crisis even though 86pc of the total global refugee population is currently residing in low and middle-income countries. According to UNHCR global trends 2015, “Countries in developing regions hosted 13.9m of world’s total refugee population, compared with the 2.2m hosted by countries in developed regions.”
All 10 major countries of origin of refugee and source of 76pc of (12.2m) of the global refugee population under UNHCR mandate are located in developing regions. By the end of 2015, Syria with 4.9m refugees was the largest refugee source country; Afghanistan with 2.7m refugees remained the second largest country of origin of refugees followed by Somalia, the source country of 1.2m refugees.
In addition to the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic, other new or reignited crises in Burundi, Iraq, Libya and Niger, and older unresolved crises in Afghanistan, Congo, South Sudan and Yemen were responsible for the unprecedented rise in recent global forced displacement in 2015. The crises of gang violence in Central American El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras also uprooted thousands of people who fled to Mexico and United States this year.
During 2015, almost 201,400 refugees from 39 countries were able to return to the countries of their origin as Congo, Iran, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda actively exercised the policy of voluntary repatriation and resettlement. Furthermore, 107,100 refugees were admitted for resettlement against the 134,000 refugees referred for resettlement by UNHCR. While 32,000 refugees found a permanent home in the country of asylum through naturalisation or local integration.
Today, globally there is the highest number of refugees, internally displaced persons and asylum seekers than ever before, but dealing with mass migration has remained a constant concern for more than half of the last century. It was during 1940 to 1960 when WWII, post-WWII conflicts, and partition of India-Pakistan caused the displacement of at least 81.6m people; the largest population displacement in the 20th century.
For the next 40 years, the decolonisation movements, the wars of independence, civil conflicts during the 50s to 60s, the Cold War’s proxy battles in the ’70s and ’80s and post-Cold War conflicts collectively rendered at least 46.5m ‘homeless’. The global displacement came down to a historic low in 2005 and started increasing again after the instability in the Middle East. Subsequently, the civil conflict in Colombia, US invasion of Iraq, persecution of ethnic minorities in Burma including Rohingya, civil war in South Sudan and the most recent and ongoing Syrian war have collectively expelled at least 22.9m people during the last 16 years.
From the past to the present: what needs to be done to resolve the refugee crisis?
In the aftermath of WWII, the United Nations created the International Refugee Organisation and later in 1950, the international community took the initiative and found the UNHCR to oversee global refugee issues and to provide relief for people fleeing conflict. The United Nations Refugee Convention obligates individual countries to provide assistance and protection to refugees and establish the principle of responsibility-sharing for the international community and to act collectively to address the refugee crisis. But both the individual states and the international community are constantly failing to meet these obligations.
Wealthier countries are reluctant to share the burden of the global refugee crisis and 86p of the world’s refugees are hosted by developing countries. Many governments prefer political interests over the lives of refugees, leaving thousands of children, women and men to die on dangerous journeys that could have been avoided. “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,” said Filippo Grandi, Commissioner for UNHCR.
This ever-rising scale of the global refugee crisis has exposed the limitations, fault lines and failures in our existing international protection and humanitarian system. Current approaches remained unable to find solutions for refugees displaced for long durations. Humanitarian responses mainly focus on care and maintenance of refugees and pay little attention to long-term sustainable solutions such as resettlement, voluntary repatriation and local integration of refugees. Moreover, the international community does not seem to offer enough burden-sharing to the host countries providing shelter to the majority of refugees in conflict regions.
For the last many years, assistance funding is constantly falling short of the requirements and the resettlement departures have barely increased; obvious signs of inequitable responsibility sharing by the international community.
A better, more welcoming world for devastated refugees is not possible unless every individual country starts respecting its legal obligation towards refugees and asylum seekers, providing assistance to those in distress during dangerous journeys through land or sea, allowing them to enter their territories and sincerely combating xenophobia. Furthermore, the international community needs to share the responsibility for assisting, hosting and resettling refugees and to provide substantial funding for UN-humanitarian appeals and give meaningful financial support to refugee -hosting countries for their humanitarian programmes.
A collective commitment from individual states and the international community is badly needed to attain long-term comprehensive solutions of voluntary repatriation, resettlement and local integration of refugees.
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