East African region a major source of refugees: UNHCR
By Tesfa-Alem Tekle
January 8, 2015 (ADDIS ABABA) – A new report issued on Wednesday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) revealed that conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere had forced to displace an estimated 5.5 million people only during the first six months of 2014.
UNHCR’s new Mid-Year Trends 2014 report shows that among the new 5.5 million people 1.4 million of them fled across international borders becoming refugees, while the rest were displaced within their own countries.
East African countries of Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan are also reported among world’s leading refugee contributing countries.
At more than three million as of June 2014, Syrian refugees, for the first time, have become the largest refugee population overtaking Afghans (2.7 million), who were the biggest group for three decades.
War- ravaged Somalia is ranked as world’s third largest refugee origin at 1.1 million.
Sudan and South Sudan are ranked at fourth and fifth place with 670,000 and 509,000 refugee populations respectively.
Pakistan, which hosts 1.6 million Afghan refugees, remains the biggest host nation in absolute terms followed by Lebanon (1.1 million), Iran (982,000), Turkey (824,000), Jordan (737,000), Ethiopia (588,000) and Kenya (537,000).
The UN refugee agency said relative to the sizes of their populations Lebanon and Jordan host the largest number of refugees, while relative to the sizes of their economies; Ethiopia and Pakistan shoulder the burdens of refugees.
The new data brings the number of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate to 13 million as of mid-2014 the highest since 1996 while the total number of internally displaced people protected or assisted by the agency reached a record high of 26 million.
“In 2014, we have seen the number of people under our care grow to unprecedented levels. As long as the international community continues to fail to find political solutions to existing conflicts and to prevent new ones from starting, we will continue to have to deal with the dramatic humanitarian consequences,” António Guterres, head of UNHCR, said in a statement.
“The economic, social and human cost of caring for refugees and the internally displaced is being borne mostly by poor communities, those who are least able to afford it.”
UNHCR’s Mid-Year Trends 2014 report is based on data from governments and the organization’s worldwide offices.
Conflicts in Middle East, in east and Central Africa and the Great Lakes region are blamed to have worsened the refugees’ crises during the first half of 2014.
(ST)