A more balanced report on world refugee numbers
Posted by judyw on June 18, 2008
The Washington Post’s article on the UNHCR’s report on refugees is more balanced than the one in the International Herald Tribune that Ann posted on earlier. It reports on repatriations as well as new refugees. It says there is a record number of refugees — 11.4 million.
The number had risen last year too, after ten years of decline. The reason for the decline was “the success of massive voluntary operations in Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Angola,” the High Commissioner for Refugees said. Once these were over, the numbers stopped declining.
On the Iraqis it says:
Syria, Jordan and Lebanon reported an influx of more than 885,000 Iraqi refugees in 2007, according to UNHCR spokesman Peter Kessler. In contrast, only 110,000 Iraqis returned to their home country last year.
That’s interesting. I haven’t seen that large a number for returnees anywhere else. The International Herald Tribune reported 78,180 had returned by March 31. But the Post article doesn’t make clear when the UN’s year begins and ends, so perhaps the rest have returned since then.
African refugees are doing better:
The latest U.N. figures show that the number of refugees from Africa continued a decade-long decline, dropping 6 percent last year, as more than 1.5 million returned to their homes in Congo, southern Sudan, Liberia and Burundi.
There were 3.1 million new people displaced in their own countries, and 2.1 million returned to their homes.
Now, here’s some information that makes all these numbers not quite what they seem:
Part of the change in the number of refugees and displaced people last year was driven by a new definition of the two groups. It now includes individuals who had never registered with the United Nations. The new formula boosts the number of Afghan refugees by about 1 million, to 3.1 million. At the same time, the U.N. refugee agency also stopped counting about 820,000 people as refugees — including 560,000 in the United States — who have been resettled outside their homeland.
I have no idea what that last sentence means. We have 560,000 refugees here? They didn’t all come last year, so where did the number come from? Is it all the refugees we’ve taken over the years? If so, why were they still being counted as refugees?
Despite some faults, this article paints what seems like a realistic picture of refugees in flux — some leaving their homes, some returning as conditions change. This is quite different from the usual picture, which leaves the impression that refugees are pouring out all over and everything is hopeless. The Washington Post can be quite good on occasion.
Posted in Iraqi refugees, Refugee Resettlement Program, Refugee statistics | No Comments »