Conflicts displaced 42 million worldwide

Some 42 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of conflicts last year, a new report shows.

The document, released by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday, says 80 per cent of the world’s refugees are in developing nations, and that their sum total includes 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people.

But, although the overall total of 42 million uprooted people at year’s end represents a drop of about 700,000 over the previous year, new displacement in 2009 — not reflected in the “Global Trends” annual report — has already more than offset the decline.

“In 2009, we have already seen substantial new displacements, namely in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said. “While some displacements may be short-lived, others can take years and even decades to resolve. We continue to face several longer-term internal displacement situations in places like Colombia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. Each of these conflicts has also generated refugees who flee beyond their own borders.”

Largest population

Colombia has one of the world’s largest internally displaced populations, with estimates of some thrree million. Iraq had some 2.6 million internally displaced at the end of 2008 —with 1.4 million of them displaced in the past three years alone.

There were more than two million IDPs in Sudan’s Darfur region in the year, and Kenya was home to some 300,000 internal refugees at the start of last year following the 2007 disputed presidential polls.

According to the report, the refugee population under UNHCR’s mandate last year dropped for the first time since 2006, partly because of voluntary repatriation and the downward revision in estimates of refugees and people in “refugee-like situations” from Iraq and Colombia.

The 2008 refugee figure was 10.5 million, down from 11.4 million in 2007. But the number of asylum seekers making individual claims rose for a second year to 839,000 — up by 28 per cent.

South Africa, with 207,000 refugees, was the largest single recipient of individual claims, followed by the United States with 49,600 (UNHCR estimate), France (35,400) and Sudan (35,100).

Major refugee-hosting countries in 2008 included Pakistan, where there were 1.8 million, Syria (1.1 million), Iran (980,000), Germany (582,700) and Jordan (500,400). Chad accomodated some 330,500 refugees, Tanzania 321,900, and Kenya 320,600.

Major countries of origin included Afghanistan (2.8 million) and Iraq (1.9 million), which together account for 45 per cent of all refugees under UNHCR’s responsibility. Other countries of origin included Somalia (561,000) and Sudan (419,000).