Conflicts in Sudan, Ukraine aggravate global refugee crisis: UN report

The UNHCR said conflict, human rights violations, and climate change caused an unprecedented rise in the number of people forcibly displaced globally.

Syrians walk in a camp for internally displaced people in al-Bab, northern Syria, on May 29, 2018. The global number of people forcibly displaced has risen each year since the 2011 Syria conflict and has now more than doubled in 2022. | Photo Credit: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP/File Photo

A record 110 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their homes, the United Nations said on June 14, branding the huge upsurge an “indictment” of the world.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, refugees fleeing Afghanistan, and the fighting in Sudan have pushed the total number of refugees forced to seek shelter abroad, and those displaced within their own countries, to an unprecedented level, said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency.

At the end of 2022, 108.4 million people were displaced, UNHCR said in its flagship annual report, “Global Trends in Forced Displacement”. The number was up 19.1 million from the end of 2021—the biggest-ever increase since the records began back in 1975.

Since then, the eruption of the conflict in Sudan has triggered further displacement, pushing the global total to an estimated 110 million by May 2023.

For the two decades before the Syria conflict in 2011, the global level was roughly stable at about 40 million refugees and internally displaced people, the Forced Displacement report showed. But they have risen each year since and have now more than doubled.

More than one in every 74 people is now displaced, the report said. Of the total refugees and those needing international protection, about half of them came from just three countries: Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan.

“We have 110 million people that have fled because of conflict, persecution, discrimination, and violence, often mixed with other motives—in particular the impact of climate change,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told a press conference in Geneva. “It’s quite an indictment on the state of our world,” he said.

Numbers likely to increase

Of the 2022 global total, 35.3 million were refugees who fled abroad, with 62.5 million being internally displaced. There were 5.4 million asylum-seekers and a further 5.2 million other people—predominantly from Venezuela—needing international protection.

The UNHCR said that Venezuelans seeking asylum abroad nearly tripled in 2022. The UN agency found that more than two in five new asylum applicants globally last year came from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Venezuelan asylum applications surged 186 per cent last year to 2,64,000 amid an economic crisis that began in 2014, leaving many struggling to afford basic goods and services and prompting the largest refugee exodus recorded in the Americas.

Cuba, also hit by US trade sanctions and fuel shortages, recorded the second-highest asylum figure at 1,94,700—a six-fold increase since 2021. This was followed by Nicaragua at 1,65,800; Colombia at 90,500; Honduras at 79,700; and Haiti at 73,500. The UNHCR found that these asylum seekers primarily stayed within the region, particularly in neighbouring countries, with the United States, Costa Rica, and Mexico receiving the most requests.

“My fear is that the figure is likely to increase more,” said Grandi. He said the swelling displacement in 2023 was being increasingly met with “a more hostile environment, especially when it comes to refugees, almost everywhere”.

“Leadership is about convincing your public opinion that there are people that deserve international protection,” he added. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees noted that around 76 per cent of refugees fled to low- and middle-income countries, while 70 per cent stayed in neighbouring countries.

“Solutions to these movements are increasingly difficult to even imagine, to even put on the table,” he said. “We are in a very polarised world, where international tensions play out all the way into humanitarian issues.”

Door must ‘remain open’

While 2022 saw countries process asylum requests faster than previous years, the UNHCR said that backlogs keep growing due to “the sheer volume of new applications”.

Grandi also raised concerns about tougher rules on admitting refugees and push-backs, without naming countries. “We see increasingly a reluctance on the part of states to fully adhere to the principles of the (1951 refugee) convention, even states that have signed it,” Grandi said on the sidelines of the briefing.

He said Britain’s plans to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda for adjudication was “not a good idea”. He said the US case was more complex, but added: “We are worried... about denial of access to asylum in the United States.”

The US was the country to receive the most new applications for seeking asylum in 2022 with 7,30,400 claims. Grandi noted that it is also the nation with the largest backlog in its asylum system. “One of the things that needs to be done is reforming that asylum system so that it becomes more rapid, more efficient,” he said.

Under tougher new US rules, asylum-seekers are supposed to set up an interview appointment through a smartphone application or processing centres the US plans in Colombia, Guatemala, and other countries.

Grandi welcomed the European Union’s steps towards a pact on asylum and migration, calling it a good attempt to balance tensions surrounding the issue, and “relatively fair” to people on the move. Under pressure to reduce migrant arrivals, EU governments on June 8 agreed on steps to fast-track migrant returns to their countries of origin or transit countries deemed “safe”.

Grandi said the way to address the flow of people coming to Europe was to start much further upstream on refugees’ long journeys.

Trends at a glance

‘Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2022’

108.4 million forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2022 as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.

76 per cent of the world’s refugees and other people in need of international protection were hosted by low- and middle-income countries.

Türkiye hosted nearly 3.6 million refugees, the largest population worldwide, followed by Iran with 3.4 million.

52 per cent of all refugees and other people in need of international protection came from just three countries: Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan.

114,300 refugees were resettled in 2022, double the previous year (57,500).

However, the door to asylum in the EU, the US, and the UK “needs to remain open... People need to be able to seek asylum where they feel safe”. He added: “Asylum seekers should not be put in jail. Seeking asylum is not a crime.”

He also praised Kenya, which he said is looking for new solutions for the half million refugees it hosts, including many who have fled poverty and drought in the Horn of Africa.

Sudan fears

Grandi pleaded for urgent global action to alleviate the causes and impact of displacement, saying UNHCR was “not in a good financial situation this year”.

South Sudanese who fled from Sudan sit outside a nutrition clinic at a transit centre in Renk, South Sudan, in May 2023. The UN says Sudan’s conflict has displaced more than 2 million people. | Photo Credit: Sam Mednick/AP

UNHCR’s internal Sudan crisis appeal is only 16 per cent funded, and the appeal for the refugee-hosting countries is 13 per cent funded. Some 4,67,000 people have fled Sudan since fighting between warring parties broke out in mid-April, while more than 1.4 million have become internally displaced. Of the planning figure of a million refugees fleeing Sudan in six months, he said: “Now I’m thinking it’s too little.”

There were 6.5 million Syrian refugees at the end of 2022, of which 3.5 million are in neighbouring Turkey. There were 5.7 million Ukrainian refugees, with the February 2022 Russian invasion triggering the fastest outflow of refugees since the Second World War.

In 2022, over 3,39,000 refugees returned to 38 countries, while 5.7 million internally displaced people returned home. The countries hosting the most refugees are Turkey (3.6 million), Iran (3.4 million), Colombia (2.5 million), Germany (2.1 million), and Pakistan (1.7 million).

Grandi also celebrated the fact that in 2022, the number of refugees resettled in a safe third country doubled to 1,14,300 from the previous year. But he admitted this was “still a drop in the ocean”.

(with inputs from AFP, Reuters, and AP)