São Paulo – Palestinians, Syrians and Somalis are at the top in the number of displaced people in the world, according to the annual report Global Trends released this Tuesday (19) by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). It shows that 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced until the end of 2017.
Contrary to popular perception, large-scale displacement across borders is less common than the million of global displacement suggests. Nearly two thirds of those forced to flee are internally displaced people that remain in their own countries.
From the 25.4 million refugees, over a fifth (around 5 million) are Palestinians under the care of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Of the remainder, for whom UNHCR is responsible, two thirds, or nearly 13 million, come from only five countries, among them the Arab countries of Syria and Somalia (in the picture above, Somali refugee in Ethiopia), plus Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar.
The report also shows that 85% of the refugees are living in developing countries, which disputes the notion that displaced people are mainly in the global north. Four in five people seeking asylum go to countries next door to their own.
Other important data in the report are the ones that show that the majority of refugees (58%) live in urban areas and not in camps or rural areas, and that the global displaced population is young, 53% are children, including many of them unaccompanied or separated from their families.
The number of countries that host large numbers of displaced people is very low, as well as the number of countries originating large displacements. Turkey remains the country that most welcome refugees in absolute numbers, with 3.5 million refugees, especially Syrians. Meanwhile, Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees relative to its national population. Overall, 63% of all the refugee people under UNHCR’s responsibilities are in just 10 countries.
Wars and conflicts continue to be the main causes of forced displacement, with little progress made towards peace, and solution remains in short supply. Nearly five million people have returned to their homes in 2017, most of internally-displaced people, but among these people, many returns to live in precarious conditions.
Overview
Among the 68.5 million of displaced people, 16.2 million were uprooted in a forced way in 2017, for the first time or repeatedly, the equivalent to 44,500 people being displaced, every day, or a person being displaced every two seconds.
Refugees that were forced to flee their homes due to conflict and persecution total 25.4 million, 2.9 million more than in 2016, and the biggest increase the UNHCR has ever registered in a single year. The number of asylum-seekers that were still waiting for their asylum claim to come through on December 31, 2017, increased in 300,00, now totaling 3.1 million people. Displaced people in their own country account for 40 million of the total, a little less than the 40.3 million of 2016.
The report shows that the world had more refugees in 2017 than the population of Australia, and nearly as much as forced displayed people than the population of Thailand. Worldwide, one in 110 people has been displaced.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
