Geneva, Switzerlan: War, violence, persecution, human rights violations and other factors caused nearly 3 million people to flee their homes last year, even though the COVID-19 crisis restricted movement worldwide, the U.N. refugee agency said in a report Friday.
In its
latest Global Trends report, UNHCR said the world’s cumulative number of
displaced people rose to 82.4 million — roughly the population of Germany and a
new post-World War II record.
Filippo
Grandi, the United Nations’ high commissioner for refugees, said conflict and
the fallout from climate change in places such as Mozambique, Ethiopia’s Tigray
region and Africa’s Sahel area were key drivers of refugees and internally
displaced people in 2020.
Such
factors added hundreds of thousands to the overall count, the ninth consecutive
annual increase in the number of forcibly displaced people. The millions who
have fled countries such as Syria and Afghanistan due to protracted wars or
fighting have dominated the U.N. agency’s tally for years.
“This is
telling, in a year in which we were all locked down, confined, blocked in our
homes, in our communities, in our cities,” Grandi said in an interview before
the report’s release. “Almost 3 million people have had to actually leave all
that behind because they had no other choice.”
“COVID-19
seems to have had no impact on some of the key root causes that push people to
flee, he said. “War, violence, discrimination, they have continued, no matter
what, throughout the pandemic.”
UNHCR
said 1% of all humanity is now displaced, and there are twice as many forcibly
displaced people than a decade ago. Some 42% of them are under 18, and nearly 1
million babies were born as refugees between 2018 and 2020.
“Many of
them may remain refugees for years to come,” the agency’s report said.
UNHCR,
which has its headquarters in Geneva, said that 99 of the more than 160
countries that closed their borders because of the coronavirus did not make
exceptions for people seeking protection as refugees or asylum-seekers.
Grandi
acknowledged the possibility that many internally displaced people who couldn’t
leave their own countries will eventually want to flee abroad if the pandemic
eases and borders reopen..
“A good
example is the United States, where already we have seen a surge in people
arriving in recent months,” Grandi said, referring to a a U.S. provision called
Title 42 that let authorities temporarily block asylum-seekers from entry for
health reasons. “Title 42 will be lifted eventually — and I think this is the
right thing to do — but this will have to be managed.”
Asked
about U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent trip to Central America, where
she told people hoping to migrate to the U.S. “do not come,” Grandi expressed
hope that the remark was not reflective of overall U.S. policy.
“I think
that messaging indeed, as it was reported, is stark, and maybe shows only one
part of the picture now,” Grandi said, adding that he had heard a “more complex
response” from other officials in Washington when he was there recently.
Among recent
hotspots, Grandi said hundreds of thousands of people were newly displaced in
Mozambique and the Sahel last year, and up to 1 million in the Tigray conflict
that started in October.
“I’m
worried that if the international community is not able to stop these
conflicts, we will continue to see the rise in the numbers,” he said.
The
report said that at the end of last year there were 5.7 million Palestinians,
3.9 million Venezuelans and an additional 20.7 million refugees from various
other countries displaced abroad. Another 48 million people were internally
displaced in their own countries. Some 4.1 million more sought asylum.
Turkey,
a neighbor of Syria, has taken in the most refugees in absolute numbers — 3.7
million. The figure is more that twice that of the No. 2 host country,
Colombia, which borders Venezuela. Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan was third.
David
Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, said the
UNHCR counts should be “a wake up call for the international community.” He
appealed in particular to the European Union.
“The
triple threat of conflict, climate change and COVID-19 continues to destroy
lives and livelihoods, demanding a truly global response,” Miliband said. “As
one of the world’s wealthiest and most stable regions, the EU can and must be
at the forefront of these efforts.”
Jan
Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, decried an “epic
failure of humanity” and said many more people are on the move today than at
any time during World War II.
“The
majority of people fleeing today are on the move because of manmade conflicts,”
Egeland said. ”What is lacking is the political will and leadership to end
these wars.”
*Lederer
reported from the United Nations in New York.
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