UN urges leaders to step up efforts to foster peace as displacement hits new high in 2020

The United Nations on June 18 reported that despite the coronavirus pandemic, the number of people fleeing war and persecution continued rising last year. According to a fresh report from the UN refugee agency, the global displacement climbed to over 82 million, which is double the figure a decade ago. The agency said that the global displacement figures swelled around three million in 2020 after an already record-breaking year in 2019, leaving a full one per cent of humanity uprooted and displaced. 

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said, “Behind each number is a person forced from their home and a story of displacement, dispossession and suffering. They merit our attention and support – not just with humanitarian aid, but in finding solutions to their plight”. 

The UN report highlighted how drawn-out crises like those in Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen were continuing to force people to flee, while eruptions of violence in places like Ethiopia and Mozambique were causing surging displacement. The UN agency found that by the end of 2020, a record 82.4 million people were living as refugees, asylum seekers or in so-called internal displacement within their own countries. The officials said that the numbers were up from some 40 million in 2011. 

According to a press release, a full 42 per cent of the world’s displaced are girl and boys under the age of 18. Around 26.4 million people were living as refugees at the end of 2020, including 5.7 million Palestinians. Some 3.9 million Venezuelans were also displaced beyond their borders without being considered refugees, while 4.1 million people were registered worldwide as asylum seekers. 

The United Nations informed that last year more than 11 million people were newly displaced, which is slightly more than in 2019, with most in just a handful of conflict-wracked countries and regions. They include Syria, which after more than a decade of war counts 13.5 million people displaced either inside or outside the country - more than half of its population and a sixth of the global displacement total, the report said. It added that more than two-thirds of the world's refugees meanwhile come from just five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar.

Further, as per the press note, a number of new crises have also sparked significant displacement. Ethiopia's violence-hit Tigray region saw an exodus into Sudan of over 54,000 people in the final months of 2020 alone. Hundreds of thousands of people also escaped deadly jihadist violence in northern Mozambique, while hundreds of thousands more were freshly displaced in Africa's restive Sahel region.

UN urged global leaders to step up efforts 

UNHCR has urged world leaders to step up their efforts to foster peace, stability and cooperation in order to halt and begin reversing nearly a decade-long trend of surging displacement driven by violence and persecution. While citing the report, Grandi said that world leaders must act to reverse the trend of soaring displacement. He added that solutions require global leaders and those with influence to put aside their differences, end an “egoistic approach” to politics, and instead focus on preventing and solving conflict and ensuring respect for human rights. 

Filippo Grandi said, “While the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Global Compact on Refugees provide the legal framework and tools to respond to displacement, we need much greater political will to address conflicts and persecution that force people to flee in the first place”. 

He added, “The tragedy of so many children being born into exile should be reason enough to make far greater efforts to prevent and end conflict and violence”. 

(Image: AP)