Global Trends: Forced Displacement - UNHCR Reports 2016
According to Global Trends 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports, one person is forcibly displaced every three seconds, meaning 20 people every minute of the day, nearly 66 million people year, and the number increases every year. The UN High Commissioner Filippo Grandi urges "solidarity and a common purpose in preventing and resolving crisis" to properly protect and care for the world's refugees, internally displaced and asylum-seekers; who currently number 22.5 million, 40.3 million, and 2.8 million, respectively.
“The world’s biggest producer of refugees” remains Syria, with 12 million displaced people. There are 7.7 million displaced Colombians, 4.7 million Afghans and 4.2 million Iraqis. In 2016 "the biggest new factor" was South Sudan, which is in a civil war since 2013, with some 737,400 people fleeing by the end of the year. In 2016 of all the people fleeing war, disasters, and persecution, about 84 per cent relocated in low- or middle-income countries. It means that developing countries are hosting the majority of the world’s refugees. Of that figure, 1 out of 3 people, roughly 4.9 million people, were hosted by the least developed countries.
This figures should make us think. The UNHCR agency said that “This huge imbalance reflects several things including the continuing lack of consensus internationally when it comes to refugee hosting and the proximity of many poor countries to regions of conflict”. Solidarity should be the key-word, and a serious and global politics to solve crisis and to prevent new ones. All the richest countries should take responsibility to globally develop a labor policy so that refugees can work in the hosting country, safeguarding their dignity and their right to live, and at the same time without creating strong economic and social imbalances in the society that hosts them.