The world’s refugee population fell last year to its lowest level in a decade, led by returnees to Afghanistan and Angola, the UN’s refugee agency announced on Thursday.
The total ”population of concern” to UNHCR — including refugees, recently returned refugees, asylum seekers, and those displaced within their home countries — fell to 17,1-million by the end of 2003, down from 20,8-million in 2002.
Refugees in particular — defined as those who have fled across an international border — fell for the second consecutive year. The global refugee population fell by 10%, down from 10,6-million in 2002 to 9,7-million in 2003.
”The statistics are very encouraging, especially for the nearly five-million people who over the past few years have been able to either go home or to find a new place to rebuild their lives,” said Ruud Lubbers, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. ”For them, these dry statistics reflect a special reality — the end of long years in exile and the start of a new life with renewed hope for the future.”
Lubbers credited international efforts to find long term solutions to refugee situations that have gone on for years or, in some cases, decades. He said there had been ”unprecedented” levels of voluntary repatriation over the past two years, with some 3,5-million refugees going home, most of them Afghans returning from Pakistan and Iran.
The effects of international efforts to improve the situation in Afghanistan had been felt as far away as Europe, where the numbers of Afghan asylum seekers ”plunged”, he said.
”The phenomenal return of Afghans to their homeland over the past few years underscores the benefits of sustained international attention and support for the work of UNHCR and its partners in regions of origin,” Lubbers said.
The number of Afghans seeking asylum in the UK has dropped dramatically over the last few years, from 8 820 in 2001 to just 285 in the first quarter of 2004. In 2002, the government introduced a scheme of special payments to Afghans willing to return home voluntarily. Last year it began enforced removals of families whose asylum applications had failed. In 2002 and 2003, a total of 26 838 Afghans either returned voluntarily or were removed from the UK.
Lubbers warned that successful repatriation required continued international support and investment in reconstruction efforts.
The number of asylum seekers worldwide fell 12% to 995 000 in 2003. Afghans remained the largest single nationality seeking asylum, with 2,1-million looking for refuge in 74 countries, followed by Sudanese and Burundians.
Pakistan came top the list of countries for asylum, with 1,1-million seeking refuge there. Next on the list are Iran, Germany, Tanzania and the US, which has 452 500 asylum seekers.
Six countries — Sudan, Liberia, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Côte d’Ivoire and Somalia — still provided particular cause for concern in 2003:. UNHCR currently has 100 000 Sudanese refugees in its camps in eastern Chad, with up to 90 000 more awaiting removal from the insecure Chad-Sudan border region. The agency said hundreds more refugees are arriving every week in Chad, fleeing Arab militia attacks in western Sudan’s Darfur region.
On Wednesday, UN investigators announced that more than 22 000 refugees had fled fighting in the eastern DRC and escaped to neighbouring Burundi in the past week alone. The latest exodus was sparked by a rebel takeover of the eastern town of Bukavu. The government has retaken the town, but tensions remain high in a country still shattered by the 1998-2002 civil war. – Guardian Unlimited Â