World Refugee Day ? 20 June 2012

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Another World Refugee Day to celebrate and this time with a record: 800,000 people forced to flee across borders in 2011. A report released today by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees shows 2011 to have been a record year for forced displacement across borders, with more people becoming refugees than at any time since 2000. The major humanitarian crisis began in late 2010 in Côte d’Ivoire, and was quickly followed by others in Libya, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere. In all, 4.3 million people were newly displaced, with a full 800,000 of these fleeing theircountries and becoming refugees. Worldwide, 42.5 million people ended 2011 either as refugee), internally displaced or in the process of seeking asylum. Despite the high number of new refugees, the overall figure was lower than the 2010 total of 43.7 million people, due mainly to the offsetting effect of large numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) returning home:  3.2 million, the highest rate of returns of IDPs in more than a decade. Forced displacement is affecting larger numbers of people globally, with the annual level exceeding 42 million people for each of the last five years. Another is that a person who becomes a refugee is likely to remain as one for many years – often stuck in a camp or living precariously in an urban location: Of the 10.4 million refugees under UNHCR’s mandate, almost 7 million have been in protracted exile for at least five years awaiting a solution. Overall, Afghanistan remains the biggest producer of refugees (2.7 million) followed by Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Around four-fifths of the world’s refugees flee to their neighbouring countries, reflected in the large refugee populations seen, in Pakistan, Iran, Kenya and Chad. The landscape of the Americas, despite being the region where the rate of asylum is the lowest (8%) worldwide, is no less worrying. The number of persons of concern to UNHCR is 4 million refugees, displaced, asylum seekers and statelessness in this continent. Most of these refugees are from Colombia. Ecuador remains the country with the largest refugee population, housing 55,092 people, followed by  Costa Rica Chile, Panama and Brazil. UNHCR’s original mandate was to help refugees, but in the six decades since the agency was established its work has grown to include helping many of the world’s internally displaced people and those who are stateless, i.e. lacking recognized citizenship and the human rights that accompany this (12 million officially recognised).