World Refugee Day: the numbers worrying the world

In 2001, the United Nations General Assembly decided that on June 20, the international commemoration of the World Refugee Day, making it coincide with the anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. It honors refugees and internally displaced persons around the world. This is an opportunity to foster understanding and empathy with refugees and displaced persons given the difficult circumstances in which they find themselves; Likewise, the date helps to recognize their resilience capacity to rebuild their lives.

Every minute in the world, 20 people give up everything to escape war, persecution or violence. According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of forcibly displaced persons exceeded the 82.4 million threshold in 2020, an unprecedented figure in history and equivalent to 1% of the world’s population.

the worldwide number of people who have been forced to move it has increased compared to the data recorded in recent years.

NUMBERS

Data recorded last year showed people have left their homes due to persecution, conflict situations or human rights violations. Of them, 48 million corresponded to internally displaced persons, 26.4 million to refugees Yes 4.1 million to asylum seekers. This figure also includes 3.9 million Venezuelans displaced.

Those under the aegis of UNHCR amounts to 26.4 millionwhile those under the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) amounts to 5.7 million. This figure represents an increase over recent years.

Among the refugees registered in the world, the 68% come from just five countries. In first place is Syria with 6.7 million, followed by Venezuela (4 million), Afghanistan (2.6 million), South Sudan (2.2 million) and Burma (1.1 million).

Almost four in ten refugees are concentrated in five countries, one 39% of total, with Turkey tops the list, hosting 3.7 million people. It is followed by Colombia with 1.7 million, Pakistan with 1.4 million, Uganda with 1.4 million and Germany with 1.2 million.

Of the total displaced, the 42% (35 million), are under 18. Between 2018 and 2020, a million children are born refugees, which equals a total between 290,000 and 340,000 births per year.

The countries considered as developing countries concentrate 86% of the refugees, including Venezuelan migrants, while 73% of these people disembark in the territories neighboring their places of origin.

INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS

The number of internally displaced persons it further increased in 2020 to 45.7 million.

According to the records, Colombia is the country with the most internally displaced persons, which is equivalent to 8.3 million. It is followed by Syria, the Republic of Congo and Yemen.

ASYLUM

In 2020, asylum requests remained 4.1 million, now the figure recorded in 2019.

The requests were initiated by people from Venezuela, Afghanistan and Syria.

In addition, most requests were registered in the United States, Germany and Spain.

Some 250,000 refugees returned to their country of origin in 2020, 21% less than in 2019, while a further 34,400 benefited from UNHCR’s resettlement programs, although the agency acknowledged that such organized transfers have fallen to minimum levels over the past decade due to the lack of available places and restrictions stemming from relocation. COVID-19 pandemic.

Some 33,800 refugees were granted citizenship in their host countries in 2020, while the global number of asylum seekers stands at 4.1 million.

The UN has estimated that 4.2 million people live as stateless, without belonging in administrative terms to any country, but this also assumes that the real figure is much higher due to the difficulty of collecting precise data on this subject.

(with information from EP and UNHCR)

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