2021 Year in Review: Refugee, migrant numbers rise, despite travel curbs
New York, US (PANA) - Pandemic-related travel restrictions may have put a dent on international migration figures in 2021, but the number of people forced to leave their homes due to conflict and persecution rose to record highs, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.
According to UNHCR data, by November, more than 84 million people had been forced from their homes. This figure is an increase from 2020 and 2019, both of which were record-breaking years in terms of the numbers forcibly displaced around the world.
A UN statement said this rise was coupled with a drop in global mobility overall due to stricter travel rules, prompting the Director General of the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), António Vitorino, to declare that the world was "witnessing a paradox not seen before in human history”.
“While billions of people have been effectively grounded by COVID-19, tens of millions of others have been displaced within their own countries,” he said, at the launch of the agency’s latest World Migration Report.
The migration agency also warned that refugees and migrants who move out of necessity had been particularly hard-hit by COVID-related travel restrictions, and millions had found themselves stranded away from home and in danger.
The UN said conflict was one of the main reasons that people left their homes in search of a better life, and there was, sadly, a great deal of violence throughout the year, particularly in Africa, where huge numbers were displaced, either within their own borders or to neighbouring states.
Many African countries were affected. In the Central African Republic, presidential elections were followed by fighting; the Darfur region of Sudan was hit by inter-communal violence; atrocities were committed by armed groups in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo; and in Burkina Faso there was a rise in violent jihadist attacks. Several hundred thousand people were displaced as a result.
The rising conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in 2021 caused widespread concern and massive displacement, with UNHCR reporting desperate people crossing into Sudan with little more than the clothes on their backs.
Meanwhile, Eritreans who had come to Ethiopia, escaping violence in their own country, soon found themselves caught up in the Tigray fighting: in March, satellite images showed that camps housing thousands of Eritrean refugees had been burned to the ground.
The Mediterranean Sea has, for many years, been a favoured route for migrants and refugees attempting to reach what they regard as a safe haven in Europe.
However, the hazardous crossing became even more deadly this year, as European countries stepped up expulsions and pushbacks at land and sea borders, the UN said.
In the first six months of the year, at least 1,140 died attempting to reach Europe by boat. Hundreds more died in the second half of the year, whilst trying to reach Europe from northern African states or Turkey.
Many of those who attempt the crossing left from Libya, whose coast was the scene of fatal shipwrecks, including a January wreck in which 43 people died, and an April disaster, which claimed the lives of 130 people, prompting the UN’s migration and refugee agencies to reiterate calls for the reactivation of search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Despite an improved peace and security situation, the country itself continued to pose dangers for refugees and migrants. The UN complained that they faced increasingly heavy-handed treatment from targeted security operations, resulting in at least one death and a steep increase in detentions.
-0- PANA MA/RA 29Dec2021
