The number of international refugees has fallen to its lowest level in a quarter of a century, but civil wars have led to a big rise in those forced to flee their homes while staying within the boundaries of their country, according to the United Nations.
With millions returning to countries such as Afghanistan, Angola and Sierra Leone, refugee numbers now stand at 9,2million, the lowest figure for 25 years, says new report The State of the World’s Refugees: Human Displacement in the New Millennium. In 1992, the figure was 18million.
However, there are now about 25million internally displaced people who do not fall under the 1951 Refugee Convention, but cannot live in their homes.
”People who would otherwise seek safety in neighbouring states are more frequently compelled to remain within the borders of their own country, most often in similar conditions to refugees,” said the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres. He said internal displacement was the world community’s ”biggest failure” in terms of humanitarian action.
”In many circumstances, for displaced people the government is part of the problem and not part of the solution,” said Guterres. Fewer conflicts between states has cut the numbers, but civil wars have still made people flee their homes. Because of conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, there were 7,5million internally displaced last year. The UN Refugee Agency is now embarking on its biggest operation to help displaced people since 1945.
The movement of people and their ”forced displacement for political, economic and environmental reasons”, will be one of the 21st century’s two biggest problems, Guterres, the former Portuguese prime minister, said. He warned countries against sending back asylum seekers to states with poor human rights.
There is still a ”huge gap” between what developed countries should be doing to help and what they are doing, he said. The ”war on terror” was having a destabilising effect, as ”populist politicians and media” try to create fears that refugees are threats to security.
Guterres criticised countries that sent refugees back to possible torture or imprisonment. ”Nobody is supposed to be returned to a country where he or she will be tortured,” he said. ”The refugee law is not the only human rights law.”
He also criticised claims that refugees threatened state security. ”Refu-gees are not terrorists, they are the victims of terrorism,” he said, adding that asylum seekers had to submit to fingerprinting, biometrics and many other identity tests. ”It is obvious that if you want to act as a terrorist, you don’t go through this channel.”
More than four million refugees have returned to Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands more to Angola, Sierra Leone, Burundi and Liberia. It is thought that more than four million will return to southern Sudan, either from abroad or from internal displacement, over the next few years.
But the report paints a gloomy picture for more than half the world’s refugees, with at least 33 ”protracted refugee situations” involving groups of at least 25 000 people in exile for five years or more. They account for 5,7million of the world’s 9,2million refugees. The largest, most intractable refugee issue remains that of the Palestinians, with some 4,2million dispersed across the Middle East. Guterres saw no imminent solution: ”We can only hope, but we have been hoping for decades.”
Guterres said one of the problems was that the line between migrants seeking a better economic existence and refugees with a ”well-founded fear of persecution” had become blurred. This had led to intolerance and misunderstandings. The number of international migrants had been put at more than 175million and asylum seekers and refugees made up only a small proportion of that. He also suggested that the movement of people, along with the environment, were the world’s two biggest challenges.
The survey also found that, despite 70% of the world’s refugees living in developing countries, there was a growing degree of ”asylum fatigue” in many parts of the world. Guterres said he did not believe such fatigue was justified in Europe. He said Pakistan had taken in six million Afghans, of whom there were still 3,5million in the country. He singled out Brazil’s enlightened policy on refugees with applicants being processed swiftly.
”The danger in the current international context is that states will use the issue of terrorism to legitimise the introduction of restrictive asylum practices and refugee policies, a process which began well before the events of September 11 2001,” the report concludes. ”This has led to a tendency to criminalise migrants, including asylum seekers, by associating them with people smugglers and traffickers … the rise of xenophobia and fear of asylum seekers in many countries … has led to a tendency to see refugees not as victims, but as perpetrators of insecurity.” — Â