Number of forcibly displaced people worldwide hit 68.5m
in 2017
The Rohingyas, the third largest refugee group in the
world last year, are now in critical need of international protection as their
condition is worse than the others, the UN Refugee Agency has said.
Of the 2.7 million people, who fled violence in their
home countries in 2017, more than 10,00,000 were from South Sudan, 745,000 from
Syria and 6,55,000 from Myanmar, said the UNHCR in its Global Trend report
released yesterday, on the eve of the World Refugee Day.
People who fled South Sudan and Syria in the wake of
civil wars and took shelter in other countries are not stateless and are free
to return to their homelands once the conflicts are over, but the situation of
the Rohingyas is different.
The Rohingyas, who either fled violence in Myanmar's
Rakhine State or were driven out of the country, are stateless because of the
restrictive provisions and applications of a citizenship law, which primarily
confers citizenship on the basis of race, the report noted.
"As a direct result of their statelessness, the
Rohingyas in Myanmar suffer entrenched discrimination, marginalisation, and
denial of a wide range of basic human rights," said the report titled
“Forced Displacement in 2017”.
Last year, the UNHCR was only able to account for 3.9
million out of an estimated 10 million stateless people in the world, but the
case of the Rohingyas is unique.
“Nowhere is the link between statelessness and
displacement more evident than for the Rohingya community of Myanmar, for whom
denial of citizenship is a key aspect of the entrenched discrimination and
exclusion that have shaped their plight for decades,” UNHCR head Filippo Grandi
said in a statement.
By the end of last year, 6,55,500 Rohingyas had fled to
Bangladesh amid a brutal military crackdown since August last year, increasing
the number of stateless Rohingyas here to more than 932,200.
At the end of 2017, some 470,000 stateless Rohingyas
remained in the northern part of Rakhine State. In addition, 125,600 internally
displaced Rohingyas, largely confined to camps in central Rakhine since 2012,
are also stateless and in need of protection.
Myanmar wants to take them back under an agreement with
Bangladesh, but the Rohingyas want guarantee of citizenship, deployment of UN
peacekeepers and return to their homes that were burnt during the violence.
Due to global geopolitics -- with the UN Security Council
divided over any resolution against Myanmar -- the fate of the Rohingyas hangs
in balance. Bangladesh, a highly populated country with scarce resources, is
facing difficulties in tackling the crisis that has acerbated in the monsoon
season now.
“Because they are both stateless and refugees, the
Rohingya in Bangladesh are in critical need of international protection,” said
the UNHCR report.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, World Bank Group
President Jim Yong Kim and UNHCR head Grandi are expected to visit Bangladesh
at the end of this month.
GLOBAL SCENARIO
In 2017, 16.2m people were forcibly displaced as a result
of persecution, conflict or generalized violence. This means 44,400 people
every day and it is the highest number recorded by the UNHCR.
It brings the total worldwide population of forcibly
displaced people to a new high of 68.5m, including 40m internally displaced
people, 25.4m refugees and 3.1m asylum seekers.
Refugees overwhelmingly originate from less developed
nations. The conflict in Syria and displacements in Burundi, Central African
Republic, Congo, Iraq, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen have
raised their number to the levels observed today.
By the end of 2017, a total of 6.3m people from Syria
were classed as refugees, while Afghanistan is the source of 2.6m and South
Sudan accounts for 2.4m refugees.
Some 85 percent of the world's refugees are hosted in
countries of developing and least developed regions. The ten countries hosting
the majority of the refugees include Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Lebanon, Iran,
Bangladesh, Germany, Sudan, Ethiopia and Jordan.
“We are at a watershed, where success in managing forced
displacement globally requires a new and far more comprehensive approach so
that countries and communities aren't left dealing with this alone,” said
Grandi.
“But there is reason for some hope. Fourteen countries
are already pioneering a new blueprint for responding to refugee situations and
in a matter of months a new Global Compact on Refugees will be ready for
adoption by the United Nations General Assembly.
“Today, on the eve of World Refugee Day, my message to
member states is please support this. No one becomes a refugee by choice; but
the rest of us can have a choice about how we help.”
Source: The Daily Satar
Source: The Daily Satar