Migrants, UNHCR report: record 79.5 million refugees worldwide in 2019

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June 18, 2020 In 2019, a record number of 79.5 million refugees was registered, equal to 1% of the world population, 10 million more than the previous year. Forced to flee from conflicts, persecutions and violence and with less and less chance of being able to return home. This is the main figure contained in the annual report of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Global Trends, which offers a global overview of forced displacement.

Long-standing conflicts

77% of refugees come from long-term crisis scenarios, such as Afghanistan, as well as Syria and Yemen, but other highly destabilized areas are added to the long-standing conflicts, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela and several Sahel nations. Two thirds of people fleeing abroad come from just five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar.

Doubled from 2010 to today

Relocating the 2019 figure in a historical perspective, the number of people fleeing has almost doubled compared to 41 million in 2010. In the last decade, at least 100 million people have been forced to flee their homes, in search of safety inside. or outside their own countries. This is more people than the entire population of Egypt, the 14th most populous country in the world.

It is not a short term phenomenon

"We are witnessing a new reality that shows us how forced displacements, today, are not only widely more widespread, but also no longer a temporary and short-term phenomenon", declared the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi. "People cannot be expected to live in a precarious condition for years and years, without having the opportunity to return home or the hope of being able to start a new life in the place they are in. It is necessary to adopt both an attitude profoundly new and open to all those who flee, is a much more determined impulse aimed at resolving conflicts that continue for years and that are at the root of immense suffering ", underlined Grandi.

From Congo,Syria and Yemen mainly

The Global Trends report shows that of the 79.5 million people who were reported to be fleeing at the end of last year, 45.7 million were internally displaced. The remaining figure was made up of people who fled across the border, 4.2 million of whom awaiting the outcome of the asylum application, and 29.6 million refugees (26 million) and other people forced to flee outside their own countries. The annual increase, compared to the 70.8 million people on the run recorded at the end of 2018, is the result of two main factors. The first concerns the new worrying crises that occurred in 2019, in particular in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Sahel region, in Yemen and in Syria, the latter now in its tenth year of conflict and responsible for the exodus of 13,2 million refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons, more than a sixth of the world total.

Concern for Venezuelans

The second relates to a better mapping of the situation of Venezuelans who are outside their country, many not legally registered as refugees or asylum seekers, but for whom forms of protection are needed.

There is no turning back

The other worrying data concerns the decreasing number of refugees who are able to return home: in the 90s they were an average of 1.5 million a year while in the last 10 they were not more than 385 thousand. A figure that shows how today the increase in the number of people forced to flee far exceeds that of people who can take advantage of a lasting solution.

Food insecurity

Another cause for concern is that 80% of people fleeing the world are hosted in countries or territories afflicted by food insecurity and severe malnutrition, many of which are subject to the risk of climate change and natural disasters. More than eight out of 10 refugees (85%) live in developing countries, usually in a country bordering the one they fled from. Behind all these figures are stories of deep individual suffering.

A people of minors

The number of fleeing minors - estimated at around 30-34 million, tens of thousands of them unaccompanied - for example, is higher than that of the entire population of Australia, Denmark and Mongolia combined. At the same time, the percentage of people on the run aged 60 or over, 4% - is extremely lower than that of the world population (12%) - a statistic that attests to the agony, despair, sacrifices and separation from loved ones.