Iman, 8 , A Syrian refugee, sits in the Fadaya Camp some 25 miles east of Beirut, Sunday March 9, 2014. Iman fled Hallab, Syria, near Idlib 5 months ago with her three brothers and two sisters. She lives with her parents and six others in a single 20x20 feet tent. Iman is the youngest. She said her family had to leave Syria because it was dangerous and there was not much to eat. She goes to school at the camp, enjoys playing with her friends but wants to go home to Syria soon. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) |
[AS
ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO
READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP
SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and
conversations) THAT EMPOWER
DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE &
PEACE... and hopefully
Palestine]
http://news.yahoo.com/more-50-million-displaced-worldwide-u-n-says-051806770.html
More than 50 million displaced worldwide, U.N. says
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 50
million people were forcibly uprooted worldwide at the end of last year,
the highest level since after World War Two, as people fled crises from
Syria to South Sudan, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.
Half
are children, many of them caught up in conflicts or persecution that
world powers have been unable to prevent or end, UNHCR said in its
annual Global Trends report.
"We
are really facing a quantum leap, an enormous increase of forced
displacement in our world," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio
Guterres told a news briefing.
The
overall figure of 51.2 million displaced people soared by six million
from a year earlier. They included 16.7 million refugees and 33.3
million displaced within their homelands, and 1.2 million asylum seekers
whose applications were pending.
Syrians fleeing the escalating conflict accounted for most of the world's 2.5 million new refugees last year, UNHCR said.
In
all, nearly 3 million Syrians have crossed into neighbouring Lebanon,
Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, while another 6.5 million remain displaced
within Syria's borders.
"We
are seeing here the immense costs of not ending war, of failing to
resolve or prevent conflict," Guterres said. "We see the Security
Council paralysed in many crucial crises around the world."
NEW AND OLD CRISES
Conflicts
that erupted this year in Central African Republic, Ukraine and Iraq
are driving more families from their homes, he said, raising fears of a
mass exodus of Iraqi refugees.
"A multiplication of new crises, and at the same time old crises that seem never to die," he added.
Afghan,
Syrian and Somali nationals accounted for 53 percent of the 11.7
million refugees under UNHCR's responsibility. Five million Palestinians
are looked after by a sister agency UNRWA.
Most
refugees have found shelter in developing countries, contrary to the
myth fuelled by some populist politicians in the West that their states
were being flooded, Guterres said.
"Usually
in the debate in the developed world, there is this idea that refugees
are all fleeing north and that the objective is not exactly to find
protection but to find a better life.
"The truth is that 86 percent of the world's refugees live in the developing world," he said.
Desperate
refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa have drowned
after taking rickety boats in North Africa to cross the Mediterranean to
reach Europe, mainly via Italy.
Italy
has a mission, known as Mare Nostrum or "Our Sea", which has rescued
about 50,000 migrants already this year. Italy will ask the European
Union next week to take over responsibility for rescuing migrants, a
task that is costing its navy 9 million euros ($12.25 million) a month.
"It
is important to have a European commitment there and to make sure that
such an operation can be sustainable," said Guterres, a former prime
minister of Portugal.
The EU
bloc has harmonised its asylum system, but the 27 member states still
differ in how they process refugees and in their approval rates for
asylum applications, he said.
A record 25,300 unaccompanied children lodged asylum applications in 77 countries last year, according to UNHCR.
"We
see a growing number of unaccompanied minors on all routes. We see them
in the Mediterranean routes, we see them in the Caribbean route,
through Mexico to the United States, we see them in the Afghan route
into Iran, into Turkey, into Europe," Guterres said. "We see them
everywhere."
No comments:
Post a Comment