71 Million People Are Refugees Around the World

GENEVA (AP) — A record 71 million people have been displaced worldwide by war, persecution and other violence, the United Nations refugee agency said Wednesday, an increase of more than 2 million from a year ago — an overall total that would amount to the world's 20^th most populous country.

The annual "Global Trends" report released by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees counted the number of the world's refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people at the end of 2018.

The figures, coming on the eve of World Refugee Day on Thursday, are bound to add fuel to a debate at the intersection of international law, human rights and domestic politics, especially the movement in some countries, including the United States, against immigrants and refugees.

Launching the report, the high commissioner, Filippo Grandi, had a message for U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders, calling it "damaging" to depict migrants and refugees as threats to jobs and security in host countries. Often they are fleeing insecurity and danger, he said.

The report puts a statistical skeleton onto stories of people struggling to survive by crossing rivers, deserts, seas, fences and other barriers, natural and manmade, to escape government oppression, gang killings, sexual abuse, militia murders and other such violence at home.

The UNHCR said 70.8 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of last year, up from about 68.5 million in 2017 — and nearly a 65% increase from a decade ago. Among them, nearly three in five people — more than 41 million — are displaced within their home countries.

"The global trends once again, unfortunately, go in what I would say is the wrong direction," Grandi told reporters in Geneva. "There are new conflicts, new situations, producing refugees, adding themselves to the old ones. The old ones never get resolved."

The tragedies are growing in size and duration. Some four-fifths of the "displacement situations" have lasted more than five years. After eight years of war in Syria, for instance, its people continue to make up the largest population of forcibly displaced people, at some 13 million.

Amid runaway inflation and political turmoil at home, Venezuelans for the first time accounted for the largest number of new asylum-seekers in 2018, totaling more than 340,000 — or more than one in five worldwide last year. Asylum-seekers sometimes receive international protection as they await acceptance or rejection of their requests for refugee status.

The UNHCR said that its figures are "conservative" and that Venezuela masks a potentially longer-term trend.

Some 4 million people are known to have left the South American country in recent years. Many of those have freely to Peru, Colombia and Brazil, but only about one-eighth have sought formal international protection, and the outflow continues, suggesting the strains on the welcoming countries could worsen.

Grandi predicted a continued exodus from Venezuela and appealed for donors to provide more development assistance to the region.

"Otherwise these countries will not bear the pressure anymore and then they have to resort to measures that will damage refugees," he said. "We are in a very dangerous situation."

The United States remains the "largest supporter of refugees" in the world, Grandi said in an interview. The U.S. is the biggest single donor to UNHCR. He also credited local communities and advocacy groups in the United States for helping refugees and asylum-seekers in the country.

But Grandi cited long-term administrative shortcomings that have given the United States the world's biggest backlog of asylum claims, nearly 719,000. More than 250,000 claims were added last year.

He decried recent rhetoric that has been hostile to immigrants and refugees.

"In America, just like in Europe, actually, and in other parts of the world, what we are witnessing is an identification of refugees — but not just refugees, migrants as well — with people that take away jobs, that threaten our security, our values," Grandi said.

"And I want to say to the U.S. administration — to the president — but also to the leaders around the world: This is damaging."

He said many people leaving Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have faced violence by gangs and suffered from "the inability of these governments to protect their own citizens."

At more than 1.5 million, Ethiopians comprised the largest population of newly displaced people last year — nearly all internally — prompting the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council to decry a "forgotten crisis" in the East African country.

"We need a 180-degree shift in attitudes," said NRC Secretary-General Jan Egeland. “Wealthier nations must share the heavy-lifting, dig deep and support generous countries like Ethiopia to ease the human suffering of millions fleeing from conflict worldwide."

The UNHCR report noted that, by far, most refugees are taken in in the developing world, not wealthy countries.

It was the seventh consecutive year in which the numbers of forcibly displaced rose.

"Yet another year, another dreadful record has been beaten," said Jon Cerezo of British charity Oxfam. "Behind these figures, people like you and me are making dangerous trips that they never wanted to make, because of threats to their safety and most basic rights."

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