World Refugee Day: Repatriation remains lowest in 20 years

Despite 197,600 refugees being able to return home in 2010, number of people repatriated remains lowest in 20 years.

GENEVA:

Despite 197,600 refugees being able to return to their homes in 2010, the number of people repatriated remains the lowest in 20 years.

On World Refugee Day, a United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) report revealed that 80% of the world’s refugees are being hosted by developing countries.

In 2010, more than 2.9 million Internally Displaced Persons were repatriated around the world, specifically to Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Kyrgyzstan. Despite this, 27.5 million people around the globe remained internally displaced – the highest in a decade.

UNHCR’s 2010 Global Trends report shows that many of the world’s poorest countries are hosting the largest refugee populations, both in absolute terms and in relation to the size of their economies. Pakistan has the largest refugee population at 1.9 million. The country’s economy has also been affected the most with 710 refugees for each dollar of its per capita GDP.  In comparison, Germany, an industrialised country with the largest refugee population – nearly 600,000 people - has 17 refugees for each dollar of per capita GDP.

UNHCR’s Representative in Pakistan, Mangesha Kebede, said that Pakistan is not yet one of the 144 countries who have acceded to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, the main legal instrument safeguarding the rights of refugees.

One third of all refugees in 2010 were from Afghanistan. For the past 30 years, Pakistan has been hosting Afghan refugees. With nearly two million Afghans present in Pakistan today, the government is in the process of implementing a strategy that would allow for alternative stay arrangements for certain Afghans beyond the planned expiry of the proof of registration cards in 2012. The UNHCR in Pakistan is responding to one of the world’s most complex refugee situations, said Kebede.

Kebede said that in many parts of the world there is growing intolerance towards refugees and countries are making it more difficult for them to enter and claim asylum.  Refugees are being sent back to situations where their lives could again be at risk, she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2011.