Conflicts fuelled by climate change causing new refugee crisis, warns UN
Pastor Dale Morgan
Conflicts fuelled by climate change causing new refugee crisis, warns UN*
· Total up 3m to 37.4m as downward trend reverses
· Figures exclude those fleeing natural disasters
* Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday June 17 2008
Climate change is fuelling conflicts around the world and helping to
drive the number of people forced out of their homes to new highs, the
head of the UN's refugee agency said yesterday. After a few years of
improvement, thanks mainly to large-scale resettlement in Afghanistan,
the numbers of civilians uprooted by conflict is again rising. During
2007 the total jumped to 37.4 million, an increase of more than 3
million, according to statistics published today.
The figures, described as "unprecedented" by the UN, do not include
people escaping natural disasters or poverty - only those fleeing
conflict and persecution. But Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner
for refugees, said that climate change could also uproot people by
provoking conflicts over increasingly scarce resources, such as water.
In an interview with the Guardian, Guterres said: "Climate change is
today one of the main drivers of forced displacement, both directly
through impact on environment - not allowing people to live any more in
the areas where they were traditionally living - and as a trigger of
extreme poverty and conflict."
Guterres, who has held the post since 2005, said the number of refugees
was likely to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. "More and
more the international community will be facing an acceleration of
people on the move for all kinds of reasons," he said.
As climate change, a global economic slowdown, conflict and persecution
fuelled each other, it would be increasingly hard to categorise those on
the run.
"What we are witnessing is a trend in the world where more and more
people feel threatened by conflict, threatened by their own government,
threatened by other political, religious ethnic or social groups,
threatened by nature and nature's retaliation against human aggression -
climate change is the example of that. And also threatened by ... a
slowdown in global growth, plus structural change in energy and food
markets," Guterres said.
The Portuguese diplomat is visiting London to launch a week of events
marking World Refugee Day on Friday. Today a reproduction of a relief
camp in the Darfur region will be erected in Trafalgar Square to raise
awareness of the problem.
Guterres said funding from world governments had failed to keep up with
the challenge of caring for refugees, describing it as "out of
proportion with the dimension of the problem".
The task is also hindered by the legal distinction between refugees, who
flee across borders and automatically become the UNHCR's responsibility,
and internally displaced persons (IDPs), who flee their homes but remain
in their home countries. In 2007 there were estimated to be 26 million
of them, and only half receive direct or indirect help from the UNHCR.
"They remain under the protection of their own governments, but the
governments are sometimes part of the problem rather than solution,"
Guterres said.
He said the UNHCR was not seeking to widen its 1951 mandate, but wanted
a review of the status of IDPs, to ensure they received more
international help.
Statistics published today by the UNHCR show that nearly half the
world's refugees are Afghan (about 3 million, mostly scattered in
Pakistan and Iran), or Iraqi (2 million, largely in Syria and Jordan).
The world's largest population of IDPs is in Colombia, where 3 million
people have driven from their homes by years of insurgency and
counter-insurgency. There are 2.4 million IDPs thought to be in Iraq, a
rise of 600,000 over the past year. Almost all refugees end up in camps
in their region, rather than in the west, which admits relatively few.
Guterres was critical of Britain's record, particularly on refugees from
Iraq. Only 15% of their applications for refugee status have been
granted, he said, and the UK's asylum system "still requires people to
demonstrate that they are targets of violence and persecution, which is
not always easy in situations of widespread violence." But he added: "At
the same time it is true that the UK is not deporting people to central
and southern Iraq."