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14-06-2024
UNITED NATIONS: A record-breaking 120 million people have been forced to flee their homes by war, violence and persecution, the 12th year in a row the number has increased, the UN refugee agency said.
The global displaced population is now equivalent to that of Japan, the agency said.
New conflicts in Sudan and Gaza contributed to the rise, which the UN refugee agency Chief Filippo Grandi called a “terrible indictment on the state of the world”.
He called on governments to tackle the root causes of the problem, rather than politicizing refugees and turning to quick fixes such as closing borders, which he told media would not solve the problem.
Instead, he urged countries to work together for more durable solutions.
New and old crises drove up the number of refugees globally as of April 2024, according to the agency’s annual report on the subject.
In Sudan, war that started between rival generals in April 2023 pushed more than nine million people from their homes.
In Gaza, the war between Israel and Hamas has displaced an estimated 75% of the population 1.7 million people since October.
The world’s largest displacement crisis remains in Syria, where a conflict that started in 2011 keeps nearly 14 million people from their homes.
Millions more people were driven from their homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar because of fighting last year.
The UN refugee agency said it was untrue that all refugees and other migrants went to wealthy countries, pointing out that the vast majority of refugees were in neighboring and low and middle-income countries.
The number of displaced people globally has nearly tripled since 2012 and is likely to increase, Grandi said.
“Unless there is a shift in international geopolitics, unfortunately, I actually see the figure continuing to go up,” he added.
The agency condemned warring parties, saying conflicts that violated international law drove displacement.
However, The European Union’s top court has fined Hungary €200m (£169m) for failing to follow the union’s asylum policies.
The court will also issue a penalty of €1m a day until it changes its policy.
The European Court of Justice said Budapest was in breach of a 2020 judgement that it had violated EU laws by forcing asylum seekers to travel to Belgrade or Kyiv to apply for a travel permit to enter Hungary.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in a post on X, said the fine for “defending the borders of the European Union” was “outrageous and unacceptable” and said “it seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens”.
Hungary has taken a hard line on migrants from outside the EU since more than one million people entered the country in 2015, most fleeing war in Syria. The Hungarian government erected border fences and tried to stop many from crossing.
EU law states that everyone fleeing persecution in their home country has the right to ask for international protection, and cannot be removed to their home if there is a serious risk of death or torture.
Earlier, In April 2022, the government said that any asylum seeker entering the UK “illegally” after 1 January 2022, from a safe country such as France, could be sent to Rwanda. They would have their asylum claims processed there, rather than in the UK. If successful, they could be granted refugee status and allowed to stay in the landlocked east-central African country. (Int’l News Desk)
