New York City: Last month, the United Nations celebrated World Refugee Day against the backdrop of a new grim milestone: the number of people forced from their homes by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuses now exceeds 100 million Is.
This number is one of many sad figures in the recently published Global Trends Report of the United Nations Refugee Agency.
The report shows that five countries – Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar – account for more than two-thirds of displaced persons globally.
People forced to move inside their own countries – known as internally displaced people (IDPs) – constitute the majority of the forcibly displaced population. Syria and Yemen, as well as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Republic of the Congo and Colombia, continue to host the world’s largest IDP populations.
If existing conflicts remain unresolved and the eruption of new conflicts is not prevented, the UN report warns that the 21st century will be defined by increasing numbers of people forced to migrate and the limited options available to them. Will go
Population movements around the world have become so complex in nature that aid agencies are scrambling to find new ways to deal with the continuing, mass exodus. People are fleeing not only from violence, but also from economic inequality as the global wealth gap continues to widen.
Changes in weather patterns and consequent droughts, floods and natural disasters have displaced more. The food security crisis created by the war in Ukraine now threatens a new wave.
“The nature of these flows is so far so complex that even the (help) responses have become complex, difficult to organize and manage, and have been exposed to the manipulation of unscrupulous politicians who display both flux and responses. Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said at a recent conference attended by Arab News, claiming that it is impossible (for) Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “As we hear in many places, the real response is, ‘close the borders and push people back’.
The number of displaced people around the world has increased annually over the past 10 years, reaching 90 million by the end of 2021 – more than doubling in 2001. Most of the refugees came from Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan.
The numbers were also driven by new waves of violence and conflict in countries such as Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and the Congo.
Riot police detain a migrant during a clash near the Moria camp for refugees and migrants on the island of Lesbos on March 2, 2020. (AFP)
The war in Ukraine caused one of the fastest and largest displacements since World War II. In just four months, nearly 7 million Ukrainians fled their country overcoming the Syrian crisis, which has displaced more than 6 million Syrians over the course of 12 years.
Grandi praised the “quite extraordinary” humanitarian response to the conflict in Ukraine. However, the Italian humanitarian, who began his current role at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2016, lamented the difference in international response between the two conflicts.
“If you are well funded in Ukraine or Poland or the EU, it is not the same for many other situations. We have Ethiopia at the end of 2020 and by 2021. In the summer of last year we have Afghanistan. The situation was there,” said Grandy, adding that the crisis in Syria, South Sudan and Palestine has added to the swelling numbers of refugees.
“From Bangladesh to Colombia, we have a dozen operations where I’m very concerned about underfunding,” he said. “It is important to hammer and hammer the message (home) that Ukraine cannot be the only humanitarian response.”
When in 2015, crowds of desperate Syrian refugees fleeing fighting in Aleppo showed up at Europe’s doorstep, Grandi said European leaders told them: “It’s full. We can’t take anyone in now.”
“A boat of 40 or so comes into Sicily and (the leaders) are fighting over the phone over who takes what and how long,” he said. “And now all of a sudden, how is it possible that in six weeks 7 million people can come in and they are taken in? There have been problems, but overall, they have been taken up liberally, effectively and with protection.”
“I am no longer gullible,” said Grandi, “I understand the context completely. I understand that this may not always be the case. But it certainly proves an important point: the influx of refugees. Responding, to the arrival of desperate people on the shores or borders of rich countries, is not unbearable. It is indeed skillfully manageable, but there must be political will.”
A boat carrying migrants stranded in the Strait of Gibraltar was rescued by the Spanish Guardia Civil and the Salvamento Maritimo Maritime Search and Rescue Agency, with 157 migrants being rescued. (AFP)
Such political will for the 1.3 million Syrian asylum seekers who made it to Europe in 2015 was largely non-existent, and these refugees often faced bitterness and hatred even from top government officials.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban described the asylum seekers as “poisons” and “Muslim invaders”.
“There’s no chance – we’re going to send you back. This continent will not be your homeland, your own homeland. This is our homeland, we made it,” Orban said in 2015.
Also in 2015, the far-right French politician, Marine Le Pen, compared the influx of refugees to a barbaric invasion of Rome, with former British minister David Cameron calling the fledgling refugees a “swarm” and then-Polish Prime Minister Jaroslav referenced. Kaczynski accused the migrants of carrying diseases.
This attitude towards refugees and migrants was not abandoned in 2015. In 2020, Matteo Salvini, the former deputy prime minister of Italy, claimed that African diaspora was bringing diseases such as tuberculosis and scabies to Italy. However, during a Facebook livestream in March this year, Salvini promised to take refugees from Ukraine to Italy.
Grandi said: “Of course if you fall into the public opinion that incoming people will steal your job, threaten your security and destroy your values, public opinion will not be positive towards (incoming migrants). “
The fact that European leaders have not used this kind of rhetoric against Ukrainians positively casts public opinion toward asylum-seekers, Grandi said.
Ukrainian nationals fleeing conflict in their home country gather at the reception center set up for them after they arrive at Paris-Beauvais airport in Tille, north of Paris, on March 2, 2022. (AFP)
“That’s the attitude: Be creative. Give the message that politicians have about Ukrainians: that these are people in need.
“People run because they’re afraid. It’s not just Ukrainians. Syrians have run away with bombs. In the Tigre people run away with bombs, in the Sahel people either run away from bombs or carry out vicious attacks. Running away from insecurity is the same. Whether you’re Ukrainian or Nicaraguan. And I think it’s important to keep that message going.”
The UNHCR report dispels common misconceptions that the refugee crisis affects only wealthy countries, or what is commonly known as the global answer. In fact, more than 80 percent of refugees worldwide have fled to poor and middle-income countries.
“No one has heard of the 150,000 Nicaraguans hosted by Costa Rica,” Grandi said. “And yet, this is a huge problem for Costa Rica.”
Many Western nations view refugee crises as a problem they are not obligated to solve, even as many solutions now rely on agreements between the West and Russia, whose diplomatic involvement, in the wake of the war in Ukraine As a result, all have arrived. to the point of grinding.
“Those fractures between the West and Russia, between the major powers in the Security Council are scarring on international cooperation that it will take a long time to heal. And yet if it doesn’t heal, I don’t know how we will survive these global crises. How to deal with it,” said Grandy.
Borisov supporters show a banner that reads “Refugees Go Home” during the first leg of the UEFA Champions League Group E football match between Bayer Leverkusen and FC Bet Borisov. (AFP/FILE PHOTO)
The Preamble to the 1951 Refugee Convention of the United Nations defines a refugee as a person who “no longer enjoys the protection and assistance” of his country, and therefore is the responsibility of the international community as a whole.
“The interesting thing,” Grandi said, “is that donors understand very well that there cannot be disparity in response.”
Perhaps no other recent example illustrates this abdication of responsibility by the West in the form of Britain’s “Rwanda Plan”, a plan that would allow Rwanda to fly all who cross the English Channel without authorization to Rwanda for processing. tries.
According to the plan, the UK will pay an “Economic Transformation and Integration Fund” to the Rwanda government and fund each immigrant for their relocation and temporary housing.
“We are not supporting this deal,” Grandi said. “This is all wrong (and) contrary to the generosity displayed towards Ukrainians.
“It is the foundation of the right of asylum that people who are on the territory of a country (get protection), especially if that country is a signatory to the convention and has institutions to deal with (asylum-seekers).” To export to another country is contrary to any notion of international responsibility-sharing.”
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi. (AFP/FILE PHOTO)
He said: “The UK says we are doing this to protect people from dangerous journeys. Let me doubt that a little. Saving people from dangerous travel is great. But is that the real motivation for this deal to happen? Is it? I don’t think so. But I think that if really the UK and other countries wanted these dangerous journeys to stop, there are more ways to do it.”
Grandi said the plan is a “new ball game that is being blamed on Rwanda,” a country that, despite taking in thousands of Congolese and Burundian refugees, does not have the structures to determine refugee status – structures that are well in place in England.
“I made it clear to Priti Patel: this deal makes our job very difficult,” Grandi said, referring to the British Home Secretary. “The precedent it is setting is appalling.”
Asked whether the global food security crisis is now likely to prompt more people to leave their homes, Grandi said he “can’t imagine” how it could be otherwise.
He concluded that although he is calling on the world to help with the outcome of the conflict, “the problem has to be solved at the root and the war has to be stopped. Negotiations have to be restarted.”
