Global Warming to multiply World’s Refugee Burden by BBC / Reuters / UNHCR 12:37pm 18th Jun, 2007   19 June 2007    Iraq drives global refugee rise. (BBC News)    Afghans still make up the majority of the world''s refugees    The number of refugees worldwide has risen for the first time in five years, largely because of violence in Iraq, according to a United Nations report.    The total number of refugees rose by more than 14% last year to nearly 10 million, the UN refugee agency says. The number of internally displaced people also reached a record high of almost 13 million, the report says.    Besides Iraq, conflicts in Lebanon, East Timor, Sudan and Sri Lanka were blamed for the rise in refugee numbers. The figures released by the UN do not include some 4.3m Palestinians displaced by the conflict with Israel.    The current total is the highest since 2002, when the UN reported there were 10.6m refugees worldwide. "For the first time since 2002, a declining trend in the global figures was reversed," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees'' report, 2006 Global Trends, said.    The UN said the world had 9.9m refugees at the end of 2006 - a rise of 1.2m or 14% - from the total of 8.7m recorded at the end of 2005.    The report said the conflict in Iraq was largely responsible for the rise. Some 1.5m Iraqis are now estimated to be living as refugees in other countries, mostly neighbouring Syria and Jordan.    They form the world''s second-largest group of refugees after Afghans, 2.1m of whom are said to be still living outside their homeland. Among the other notable refugee populations listed in the report were 686,000 Sudanese, 460,000 Somalis and roughly 400,000 people each from DR Congo and Burundi.    The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said his organisation must work hard to adapt to the rise in refugee numbers.    "As the number of those uprooted by persecution, intolerance and violence around the world increases, we must face the challenges and demands of a changing world," he said. "We are part of the collective response by the UN system and the broader humanitarian community to the plight of the internally displaced."    But, he said, his organisation''s role was "severely constrained" when faced with conflicts such as that in Sudan''s Darfur region.    "That may seem intolerable, yet our desperation is nothing next to that of the millions of victims of forced displacement," he added.    The UN report also revealed that the number of people who were internally displaced - but not classed as refugees under international law - rose over the last year to 24.5 million.    The conflict in Iraq is again believed to be one of the prime factors behind the reported rise in internally displaced people. Some 2.3m Iraqis are believed to be displaced within their country, according to latest UNHCR figures not cited in this report.    Some 32.9m people are classed by the report as "persons of concern" - a category that includes those who are returnees, stateless or internally displaced. This figure marks a 56% increase on the figure for the previous year.    June 18, 2007    Global Warming to multiply World’s Refugee Burden, by Allistair Lyon. (Reuters)    If rising sea levels force the people of the Maldive Islands to seek new homes, who will look after them in a world already turning warier of refugees?    The daunting prospect of mass population movements set off by climate change and environmental disasters poses an imminent new challenge that no one has yet figured out how to meet.    People displaced by global warming — the Christian Aid agency has predicted there will be one billion by 2050 — could dwarf the nearly 10 million refugees and almost 25 million internally displaced people already fleeing wars and oppression.    “All around the world, predictable patterns are going to result in very long-term and very immediate changes in the ability of people to earn their livelihoods,” said Michele Klein Solomon of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM). “It’s pretty overwhelming to see what we might be facing in the next 50 years,” she said. “And it’s starting now.”    People forced to move by climate change, salination, rising sea levels, deforestation or desertification do not fit the classic definition of refugees — those who leave their homeland to escape persecution or conflict and who need protection.    But the world’s welcome even for these people is wearing thin, just as United Nations figures show that an exodus from Iraq has reversed a five-year decline in overall refugee numbers.    Governments and aid agencies are straining to cope with the 10 million whose plight risks being obscured by debates over a far larger tide of economic migrants — and perhaps future waves of fugitives from environmental mayhem.    The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which marks World Refugee Day on Wednesday, says the global political climate for refugees has already become harsher.    “They used to be welcomed as people fleeing persecution, but this has been changing — certainly since 9/11, but even before then,” said William Spindler, a UNHCR spokesman in Geneva.    “Growing xenophobia, intolerance, political manipulation by populist politicians who mix up the issues — the whole debate on asylum and migration has been confused,” he said.    People fleeing threats at home and those seeking a better life could be in the same group washing up on a Spanish beach, but Spindler said it is vital to keep the distinction between them to provide effective protection to those who need it.    Whatever their motives, migrants deserve to be treated with dignity and as human beings, he added. “We have seen people in the Mediterranean in boats or hanging onto fishing nets for days while states discuss who should rescue them.”    Before sectarian violence exploded in Iraq last year, global refugee numbers had been shrinking. The Taliban’s overthrow in Afghanistan, along with peace deals in trouble-spots like Congo, Liberia, Angola and southern Sudan, had allowed millions to return home — although 2.1 million Afghans have yet to do so.    “I’m not suggesting that life is all beautiful in those countries, but there have been advances,” said Joel Charny, vice-president of Washington-based Refugees International.    “The big exception is Iraq, the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world,” he said. “Everyone’s fleeing. It’s really broad-based insecurity displacing people in Iraq and outside.”    The UNHCR says 2.2 million Iraqis have fled abroad and over two million have left their homes inside the country, where they are much harder to track or assist than those overseas.    Around the world, nearly 25 million people are internally displaced — fleeing for the same reasons as refugees, but lacking international recognition or protection.    While Iraq and Darfur often hit the headlines, aid officials worry about the “forgotten crises” that uproot people within national borders, often far from television cameras.    “Hardly anyone is concerned about the Central African Republic,” said Sarah Hughes, UK director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). “And in Chad for instance, refugees from Darfur get three times more provision than Chadian displaced.”    Recognizing the scale of internal population upheavals, the UNHCR last year took under its wing some 13 million displaced people, many of whom had to be reached in conflict zones. “In Darfur, the problem is not funding but security and access to the people we are trying to help,” said Spindler.    The bloodshed in Iraq has made it a virtual no-go zone for international humanitarian staff, but aid workers also grapple with violent environments anywhere from Afghanistan to Colombia. “The biggest challenge is security, the shrinking of humanitarian space,” said the IRC’s Hughes.    Refugees may also feel the world has less room for them as they try to cross borders into countries where hostility to migrants of all sorts has grown, compared with the Cold War era when fugitives from communism won sympathy and asylum.    “The reaction now is skepticism,” said Charny. “It’s: ‘Who is this scam artist trying to get a job in our country?’” North Koreans fleeing to China or Zimbabweans crossing illegally into South Africa are widely treated as economic migrants though many may also be escaping persecution, he said.    “We have to maintain a refugee protection regime that doesn’t just assume everyone is an illegal economic migrant,” Charny added. “That tendency exists in the industrialized countries and in the wealthier countries of the global south.”    With those escaping environmental upsets likely to swell flows of migrants and refugees, any quest for legal definitions tying governments to new obligations might prove tricky. “That’s not to say that practical arrangements can’t be found to deal with this,” said the IOM’s Klein.    The focus should be on contingency plans for nightmare scenarios that could prove all too real, Charny agreed. “How will we approach displacement when, say, the Maldives go under?” he asked. “We have to plan for it, but in a way that doesn’t lead us all to start jumping out of windows.”    June 14, 2007    UNHCR launches Refworld as state-of-art Online Protection Tool. (UNHCR)    The UN refugee agency on Thursday launched an innovative online protection tool that provides invaluable information for those who have to make decisions on refugee status.    "We have a website now that can be considered to be one of the best in areas linked to human rights, linked to the need to make law accessible to the general public and to all relevant actors in this field," High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said at the launch of Refworld online in Geneva.    "It"s always good to see our organization doing something that we can be proud of because of the quality, the substance and the innovation," Guterres told diplomats, representatives of non-governmental organizations, European Union officials and senior staff of UN agencies.    Refworld contains a vast collection of reports relating to situations in countries of origin, policy documents and positions, and documents relating to international and national legal frameworks. The data have been carefully selected and compiled from – and with – UNHCR"s global network of field offices, governments, international, regional and non-governmental organizations, academic institutions and judicial bodies.    The free service provides the vital country and legal information that UNHCR staff and external partners need to help them make a decision about whether to grant an asylum seeker refugee status. For this to happen it has to be proved that the applicant has a well-founded fear of persecution and cannot or will not return home because of that fear.    "The result of not doing it properly can be very, very dire," Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Erika Feller told the presentation, referring to the process of refugee status determination. She said Refworld was an "exceedingly important tool" for those making status decisions.    Refworld"s unparalleled collection of protection information has been developed over the past 15 years.    The new Refworld online is a top-flight web application, easy to use and hugely powerful. It has been developed to meet the modern web"s highest standards and best practices.    It includes multiple and advanced possibilities for browsing the collection of more than 76,000 documents by region and/or country, by publisher, by topic or keyword and by document type. In addition, it has a powerful full text search engine and advanced searching facilities.    Refworld is updated daily and includes special features on topics of importance to UNHCR such as refugee status determination, statelessness, migration and related issues, gender equality and women, internally displaced persons, resettlement, voluntary repatriation and children. Visit the related web page
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