Worldwide, 1 in 110 people is displaced
BALUKHALI REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh — In southern Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled government attacks in Myanmar last year are crammed into the world’s largest refugee camp, unsure when or if they will be able to return to their homeland. In this limbo, they are far from alone. At the end of 2017, war, violence, persecution and human rights violations had forced 68.5 million people from their homes worldwide — the highest number ever recorded, according to the United Nations.
With a global population of 7.6 billion, that means 1 in 110 human beings is forcibly displaced — their families torn apart, livelihoods destroyed, schooling interrupted, hopes for the future scattered to the wind.
The number of people who were refugees overseas or displaced inside their own countries has risen in each of the last six years, the U.N. refugee agency said in an annual report released Tuesday. The largest numbers at year’s end hailed from Syria, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and South Sudan — all countries struggling with long-standing conflicts and political violence. (The lineup of the top countries producing refugees is slightly different.)
For people who left their home countries, the single largest increase in refugees came from Myanmar, where last August the army launched a ruthless crackdown against the Rohingya minority that some experts describe as genocide. (The government denies committing atrocities.)
More than 655,500 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh, most arriving in a span of 100 days, the U.N. said. Combined with others who had escaped persecution and previous rounds of state-backed violence, the camps now hold more than 930,000 Rohingya in a low-lying coastal zone the size of Washington, D.C., crisscrossed by migrating elephants and stalked by floodwaters and disease.
The Rohingya are effectively stateless — Myanmar having canceled their citizenship — and despite optimistic talk of repatriation plans are likely to be marooned here for the foreseeable future, dependent on food rations, water, basic education and medical care supplied by the international community at an estimated cost of $950 million this year alone.