The total number of refugees and internally displaced in the world reached 110 milliona record figure fueled by recent conflicts such as those of Ukraine either Sudanaccording to the annual report published this Wednesday by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
The document, which is published as usual a few days before the celebration of World Refugee Day on June 20, also highlights an unparalleled annual increase since UNHCR was founded in 1951: it passed 89.3 million refugees and displaced at the end of 2021 to 108.4 million at the end of 2022, 19.1 million more.
In the first half of this year, the figure has continued to grow to 110 million, mainly due to new crises such as the one in Sudan or deteriorating situations such as those in burmaaccording to data presented at a press conference by the UNHCR high commissioner, the Italian Filippo Grandi.
Flight to low- and middle-income countries
“The rhetoric that says that many refugees flee to rich countries is very wrong: in reality it is the opposite,” explained Grandi, who stressed that 76% of these people take refuge in low- and middle-income countries, and they are also widely the majority (70%) are those who flee to nations neighboring their country of origin.
Of the 108.4 million who have fled their homes in 2022 due to conflicts, natural disasters and other crises, UNHCR points out that 62.5 million are internally displaced persons who remain in their country and 35.3 million refugees in other territories.
Added to this are 5.4 million asylum seekers and 5.2 million “people in need of international protection”, a special category of people not exactly with refugee status but in a very similar situation and which mainly includes Venezuelans established mostly in other countries in the Americas.
“Conflicts are started too quickly and resolved too slowly. The result is devastation, displacement and anguish for these millions of people forcibly uprooted,” Grandi said.
Türkiye, Iran and Colombia
Türkiye is the country that hosts the most refugees (3.6 million, many of them Syrians), followed by Iran with 3.4 million (mostly from Afghanistan) and by Colombia with 2.5 million mainly Venezuelan refugees.
At the same time, the country from which more people have fled to others as refugees is Syria with 6.5 million, followed by Ukraine and of Afghanistan with 5.6 million each (UNHCR came to count in previous months up to 8 million Ukrainian refugees, although it has recently corrected this figure downwards).
In fourth position is Venezuela (5.4 million) and then South Sudan (2.2 million) and burma (1.2 million), according to statistics from the end of 2022, which still did not include the nearly half a million refugees caused by two months of conflict in Sudan.
90% of refugees and internally displaced persons come from developing countries, recalls a report that places the sub saharan africa as the main region of both origin (27.2 million) and destination (25.3 million) of these people.
Europe is the origin of 9.1 million and the destination of 17.3 million, while America 6.1 million refugees and displaced persons originate, but the continent is, in turn, a host country for 6.7 million.
faster flow
UNHCR highlights in the report that the invasion of Ukraine generated the fastest flow of refugees since the Second World Warequaling in just 12 months the exodus caused by the first four years of civil war in Syria.
On the positive side, some 6 million people (339,000 refugees and 5.7 million internally displaced persons) were able to return to their homes in 2022, mainly in Ethiopia after the ceasefire reached in tigray but also in countries like Burma, Syria, Mozambique or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Grandi highlighted the generosity of many host communities towards refugees and displaced persons, but stated that so far UNHCR has only received a third of the funds it needs by 2023.
Related news
The report also indicated that the United States remains the country that registered the most asylum applications last year (730,400), followed by far by Germany (217,800), Costa Rica (129,500) and Spain (118,800).
The main countries of origin for asylum seekers were Venezuela (264,000), Afghanistan (208,500), Cuba (194,700) and Nicaragua (165,800), according to UNHCR figures.