WUNRN
UNHCR – UN Refugee Agency: “Women and
girls comprise over half of any refugee, internally displaced or stateless
population.”
Refugee
& Internally Displaced Women & Children
The
often-cited statistic that as many as 80 per cent of displaced populations are
women and children fails to convey the complete devastation that displacement
visits upon women and communities. Leaving homes, property and community behind
renders women vulnerable to violence, disease and food scarcity, whether they
flee willingly or unwillingly.
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Lost Voices of the World’s Refugees - Women
Nearly four million refugees have fled Syria since the
country's conflict began in 2011. Credit Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency
June 13, 2015 - The global crisis of
people forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution is expressed in many ways
— in faceless numbers, always millions more than in the previous year; in the
images of desperate people crowded onto rickety boats; in the pictures of
endless tents on a barren, dusty field. Around the world, at least 50 million
people either have been displaced inside their countries or have fled to
foreign lands. Some, like Palestinians, have lived as refugees for generations;
some, like Syrians and Ukrainians, are fleeing more recent conflicts; some, like the Rohingya of
Myanmar, run from systematic persecution.
Once away from their homes, they become a “problem” — wards of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency or the countries in which they take refuge, usually as an unwanted and
resented burden. In the many conferences and diplomatic discussions about
refugees, their own voices are rarely heard. But when they are, as in the
poetry of the Somali-British poet Warsan Shire, it is a cry of desperation:
“You have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the
water is safer than the land.”
On World Refugee Day, June 20, the U.N.H.C.R. is expected to issue another
report, which is certain to point out the appalling global growth in the number
of refugees and that the overwhelming majority, 86 percent, live in developing countries, which
are least able to support them. Unfortunately, it is only when the human tide
overflows its Third World boundaries, like the boatloads of Africans trying to
cross the Mediterranean into Europe or the Syrians trying to cross from a
refugee-saturated Turkey into Greece or Bulgaria, that the rich nations begin a
panicky search for remedies.
The discussions in Europe about assigning refugee quotas across the
Continent or about combating the unscrupulous people smugglers do at least
raise awareness of the issue and its Europewide ramifications. But the flood of
immigrants also feeds the growth of xenophobic fringe parties, making all
politicians wary of opening their doors wide. In Australia, Prime Minister Tony
Abbott has virtually closed the doors to boat people, shunting them off instead
to countries like Cambodia or Papua New Guinea on the argument that allowing
refugees into Australia would only encourage more refugees to take dangerous
risks with the smugglers.
In the United States, a country proud of its tradition of welcoming
“huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” fewer than 1,000 Syrian refugees, of
the almost four million who have fled the country since 2011, have been
accepted. Efforts by the State Department to nudge the figure up a notch have been
resisted by legislators claiming, as did Representative Michael McCaul, the
Texas Republican who heads the House Homeland Security Committee, that this would create a
“federally funded jihadi pipeline” for Islamist militants.
It is clear that the United States and other developed countries must find
more room for refugees and must distribute the burden equitably, and it is
equally clear that the U.N.H.C.R. and other agencies dealing with the millions
of refugees must be amply funded. But these improvements alone will not solve
the problem. Nor will building higher fences. So long as there is conflict and
persecution, people will risk losing all in an effort to reach safer shores. In
the words of Ms. Shire, “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a
shark.”
But it should not take mass drownings in the Bay of Bengal or the
Mediterranean for governments to take action. It’s possible for wealthier
nations to anticipate the continuing waves of displaced people and to shape
long-term, orderly ways to help them weather the upheavals in their homelands
or, if it becomes necessary, to help them settle in new lands, the way many of
our parents and grandparents did.
From: WUNRN LISTSERVE [mailto:wunrn1@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 9:56 PM
To: WUNRN ListServe (wunrn_listserve@lists.wunrn.com)
Subject: Refugees & Internally Displaced Persons - Increase - UNHCR
Mid-Year Report - Women & Girls
WUNRN
UN REFUGEE AGENCY MID-YEAR TRENDS REPORT ON REFUGEES & INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS
WAR CAUSES FURTHER GROWTH IN FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN FIRST HALF OF 2014 – WOMEN & GIRLS
Direct Link to Full 24-Page UNHCR 2014 Report:
http://unhcr.org/54aa91d89.html#_ga=1.179637732.1940524733.1420644392
http://www.unhcr.org/54ac24226.html
© UNHCR/J.Kohler
Syrians, for the first time, have become the largest
refugee population under UNHCR's mandate.
GENEVA,
January 7 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency on Tuesday reported that war in
the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere had uprooted an estimated 5.5 million
people during the first six months of 2014, signalling a further rise in the
number of people forcibly displaced.
UNHCR's
new "Mid-Year Trends 2014" report shows that of the 5.5 million who
were newly displaced, 1.4 million fled across international borders becoming
refugees, while the rest were displaced within their own countries. Taking into
account existing displaced populations, data revisions, voluntary returns and
resettlement, the number of people being helped by UNHCR stood at 46.3 million
as of mid-2014 – some 3.4 million more than at the end of 2013 and a record high.
Among
the report's main findings are that Syrians, for the first time, have become
the largest refugee population under UNHCR's mandate (Palestinians in the
Middle East fall under the care of the UN Relief and Works Agency), overtaking
Afghans, who had held that position for more than three decades. At more than 3
million as of June 2014, Syrian refugees now account for 23 per cent of all
refugees being helped by UNHCR worldwide.
Despite
dropping to second place, the 2.7 million Afghan refugees worldwide remain the
largest protracted (at least five years) refugee population under UNHCR care.
After Syria and Afghanistan, the leading countries of origin of refugees are
Somalia (1.1 million), Sudan (670,000), South Sudan (509,000), the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (493,000), Myanmar (480,000) and Iraq (426,000).
Pakistan,
which hosts 1.6 million Afghan refugees, remains the biggest host country in
absolute terms. Other countries with large refugee populations are Lebanon (1.1
million), Iran (982,000), Turkey (824,000), Jordan (737,000), Ethiopia
(588,000), Kenya (537,000) and Chad (455,000).
By
comparing the number of refugees to the size of a country's population or
economy, UNHCR's report puts the contribution made by host nations into
context: Relative to the sizes of their populations Lebanon and Jordan host the
largest number of refugees, while relative to the sizes of their economies the
burdens carried by Ethiopia and Pakistan are greatest.
In
all, the number of refugees under UNHCR's mandate reached 13 million by
mid-year, the highest since 1996, while the total number of internally
displaced people protected or assisted by the agency reached a new high of 26
million. As UNHCR only provides help for the internally displaced in countries
where governments request its involvement, this figure does not include all
internally displaced people worldwide.
"In
2014 we have seen the number of people under our care grow to unprecedented
levels. As long as the international community continues to fail to find
political solutions to existing conflicts and to prevent new ones from
starting, we will continue to have to deal with the dramatic humanitarian
consequences," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.
"The
economic, social and human cost of caring for refugees and the internally
displaced is being borne mostly by poor communities, those who are least able
to afford it. Enhanced international solidarity is a must if we want to avoid
the risk of more and more vulnerable people being left without proper
support."
Another
major finding in the report is the shift in the regional distribution of
refugee populations. Until last year, the region hosting the largest refugee
population was Asia and the Pacific. As a result of the crisis in Syria, the
Middle East and North Africa have now become the regions hosting the largest
number of refugees.
UNHCR's Mid-Year Trends 2014 report is based on data from governments and the organization's worldwide offices. As information available to UNHCR at this point in the year is incomplete it does not show total forced displacement globally (those figures are presented in June each year in UNHCR's annual "Global Trends" report, which as of end 2013 showed that 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide). Nonetheless, the data it presents is a major component of the global total and an important indicator of worldwide refugee and IDP trends.
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http://www.voanews.com/content/un-reports-big-increase-in-people-fleeing-conflict/2588532.html
UN Reports Big Increase in People Fleeing
Conflict