A record year for forced displacements

A report released yesterday by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on World Refugee Day in Riyadh yesterday shows 2011 was a record year for forced displacement across borders, with more people becoming refugees than at any time since 2000.
World Refugee Day, which falls on June 20 every year, has “Dilemmas” as its theme.
To mark the occasion the UNHCR’s new iPhone and Android “My Life as a Refugee” app was launched.
According to UNHCR’s Regional Representation for the GCC in Riyadh, there will be various awareness programs at Riyadh Gallery Mall for the next two days.
Yesterday’s event was attended by Nabil Othman, deputy regional representative.
Saudi Arabia has been providing all types of support to UNHCR, especially since the time it hosted the Iraqi refugees at Rafha camp in 1991, with backing to humanitarian and UNHCR projects around the world.
Saudi Arabia donated $ 30 million since 1997 and $ 20 million to Pakistanis displaced by floods. It also increased its contribution to UNHCR's general budget to one million dollars.
The UNHCR also said there's growing humanitarian partnerships with the Saudi government and its various affiliated organizations and charitable institutions.
UNHCR’s 2011 Global Trends report details for the first time the extent of forced displacement from a string of major humanitarian crises that began in late 2010 in Côte d’Ivoire, quickly followed by others in Libya, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere.
In all, 4.3 million people were newly displaced, with 800,000 fleeing their countries and becoming refugees.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees and head of UNHCR António Guterres said: “2011 saw suffering on an epic scale.
“For so many lives to have been thrown into turmoil over so short a space of time means enormous personal cost for all who were affected.
“We can be grateful only that the international system for protecting such people held firm for the most part and that borders stayed open. These are testing times.”
Worldwide, 42.5 million people ended 2011 either as refugees (15.2 million), internally displaced (26.4 million), or in the process of seeking asylum (895,000).
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 3.2 million internally displaced people (IDPs) returning home, the highest rate of returns of IDPs in more than a decade.
Among refugees, notwithstanding an increase in voluntary repatriation over 2010 levels, 2011 was the third lowest year for returns (532,000 returns) in a decade.
Viewed on a 10-year basis, the report shows several trends.
One is that 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 three quarters (7.1 million) have been in exile for at least five years awaiting a solution.
Overall, Afghanistan remains the biggest producer of refugees (2.7 million) followed by Iraq (1.4 million), Somalia (1.1 million), Sudan (500,000), and Democratic Republic of the Congo (491,000).
Around four-fifths of the world’s refugees flee to their neighbouring countries, reflected in the large refugee populations seen, for example, in Pakistan (1.7 million people), Iran (886,500), Kenya (566,500) and Chad (366,500).
Among industrialized countries, Germany ranks as the largest hosting country with 571,700 refugees.
South Africa, meanwhile, was the largest recipient of individual asylum applications (107,000), a status it has held for the past four years.
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.
The 2011 Global Trends report notes that only 64 governments provided data on stateless people, meaning that UNHCR was able to capture numbers for only around a quarter of the estimated 12 million stateless people worldwide.
Of the 42.5 million people who were in a state of forced displacement as of the end of 2011, not all fall under UNHCR’s care.
Some 4.8 million refugees, for example, are registered with sister agency the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
Among the 26.4 million internally displaced, 15.5 million receive UNHCR assistance and protection.
Overall, UNHCR’s refugee and IDP caseload of 25.9 million people grew by 700,000 people in 2011.