Displaced people hit 68.5m
ONE person becomes displaced every two seconds somewhere in the world.
This shocking statistic emerged in the UN Refugee Agency, the UNHCR’s Global Trends report which said 68.5 million people were displaced as of the end of last year.
Among them were 16.2 million people who became displaced during last year itself, either for the first time or repeatedly – indicating a huge number of people on the move, equivalent to 44 500 people being displaced each day.
Wars, other violence and persecution drove worldwide forced displacement to a new high last year for the fifth consecutive year, led by the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan’s war, and the flight into Bangladesh from Myanmar of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees.
Overwhelmingly it is developing countries that are most affected. Refugees who have fled their countries to escape conflict and persecution accounted for 25.4 million of the 68.5 million. This is 2.9 million more than in 2016, also the biggest increase UNHCR has seen in a single year.
Asylum seekers, who were still awaiting the outcome of their claims to refugee status as of December 31, meanwhile rose by around 300 000 to 3.1 million.
People displaced inside their own country accounted for 40 million of the total, slightly fewer than the 40.3 million in 2016.
The statistics show that the world had almost as many forcibly displaced people last year as the population of Thailand.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said: “We are at a watershed, where success in managing forced displacement globally requires a new and far more comprehensive approach so that countries and communities aren’t left dealing with this alone.”
But there is reason for some hope, he said. “Fourteen countries are already pioneering a new blueprint for responding to refugee situations and in a matter of months a new Global Compact on Refugees will be ready for adoption by the UN General Assembly. Today, on the eve of World Refugee Day, my message to member states is please support this. No one becomes a refugee by choice; but the rest of us can have a choice about how we help.”
UNHCR’s Global Trends report is released worldwide each year ahead of World Refugee Day today, and tracks forced displacement based on data gathered by UNHCR, governments, and other partners.
It does not examine the global asylum environment, which UNHCR reports on separately and which continued last year to see incidents of forced returns, politicisation and scapegoating of refugees, refugees being jailed or denied possibility to work, and several countries objecting even to use of the word “refugee”.
Almost two-thirds of those forced to flee are internally displaced people who have not left their own countries. Of the 25.4 million refugees, just over a fifth are Palestinians under the care of the UN Relief and Works Agency. Of the remainder, for whom UNHCR is responsible, two-thirds come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia. An end to conflict in any one of these has potential to significantly influence the wider global displacement picture, according to the report.
The report also states that the global displaced population is young – 53% are children, including many who are unaccompanied or separated from their families.