St. Catharines Standard e-edition

Millions fled homes in 2020, says UN agency

JAMEY KEATEN AND EDITH M. LEDERER

GENEVA — War, violence, persecution, human rights violations and other factors caused nearly three million people to flee their homes last year, even though the COVID-19 crisis restricted movement worldwide, the UN refugee agency said in a report Friday.

In its latest Global Trends report, UNHCR said the world’s cumulative number of displaced people rose to 82.4 million — roughly the population of Germany and a new record in the post-second World War era.

Filippo Grandi, the United Nations’ high commissioner for refugees, said conflict and the fallout from climate change in places such as Mozambique, Ethiopia’s Tigray region and Africa’s Sahel area were key drivers of refugees and internally displaced people in 2020.

Such factors added hundreds of thousands to the overall count, the ninth consecutive annual increase in the number of forcibly displaced people. The millions who have fled countries such as Syria and Afghanistan due to protracted wars or fighting have dominated the agency’s tally for years.

“This is telling, in a year in which we were all locked down, confined, blocked in our homes, in our communities, in our cities,” Grandi said in an interview before the report’s release. “Almost three million people have had to actually leave all that behind because they had no other choice.”

“COVID-19 seems to have had no impact on some of the key root causes that push people to flee, he said. “War, violence, discrimination, they have continued, no matter what, throughout the pandemic.”

UNHCR said one per cent of all humanity is now displaced, and there are twice as many forcibly displaced people than a decade ago. Some 42 per cent are under 18, and nearly one million babies were born as refugees between 2018 and 2020.

“Many of them may remain refugees for years to come,” the agency’s report said.

UNHCR, which has its headquarters in Geneva, said that 99 of the more than 160 countries that closed their borders because of the coronavirus did not make exceptions for people seeking protection as refugees or asylum-seekers.

Canada & World

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2021-06-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

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