Remembering refugees
NUMBER OF REFUGEES RISES TO RECORD HIGH DUE TO JUMP IN CONFLICTS GLOBALLY
Wars, other violence and persecution worldwide raised displacement to a new high in 2017 for the fifth year in a row, a UN report released on the eve of World Refugee Day said.
Allowing refugees to benefit from national services and integrating them into national development plans is essential for both refugees and the communities hosting them.”
A report posted on the UNHCR website
Nearly 16.2 million people joined the displaced population around the world last year, raising the total number of displaced in 2017 to a new record high of 68.5 million people, a UN agency said in its annual report.
The report, ‘Global Trends’, which is an annual document prepared by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was released on the eve of the World Refugee Day today.
“In short, the world had almost as many forcibly displaced people in 2017 as the population of Thailand,” said UNHCR in a press statement.
“Across all countries, one in every 110 persons is displaced.”
According to the UNHCR, those who were displaced in 2017, either for the first time or repeatedly, “indicate a huge number of people on the move and equivalent to 44,500 people being displaced each day, or a person becoming displaced every two seconds.”
The increasing number of refugees and displaced, which has been going on for five consecutive years, came last year due to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, war in South Sudan, and the influx of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh. “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,” said the statement.
On the other hand, the number of asylum seekers as of December 31, 2017 “rose by around 300,000 to 3.1 million”.
The report’s figures came as no surprise to UNHCR espe- cially given the world body had been seeing over the last year “a continued outflow of refugees from a number of countries”, said Adrian Edwards, Genevabased head of news and media and UNHCR spokesperson.
However, what the figures reflect is the importance of collective efforts and solidarity among different countries to handle the refugees and displaced people around the world, Edwards told Gulf News.
“We certainly need to see solutions for the world’s refugees and displaced people.”
“We are at a watershed moment, 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,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi was quoted as saying.
However, “there is reason for some hope,” he said, refer-
ring to the fact that 14 countries have started working on a new blueprint for responding to refugee situations, and that plan is expected to be ready for adoption by the UN General Assembly in a matter of months.
“Allowing refugees to benefit from national services and integrating them into national development plans is essential for both refugees and the communities hosting them, and is consistent with the pledge to “leave no one behind” in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” according to a report posted on the UNHCR website.
The blueprint, which is also known as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), calls for greater support to refugees and the countries they are in at the very beginning, through offering refugees access to education and labour markets to build their skills and boost their selfreliant.