Number fleeing homeland starts to rise
Pastor Dale Morgan
Number fleeing homeland starts to rise*
Duncan Campbell
Wednesday June 20, 2007
The Guardian
The number of refugees in the world has risen for the first time since
2002, says the UN refugee agency.
The crisis in Iraq is a major factor, with 1.5 million Iraqis fleeing to
neighbouring states, mainly in Syria and Jordan.
There are now nearly 10 million refugees under the agency's mandate, a
14% rise on last year, says the UNHCR's 2006 Global Trends report,
published yesterday.
The continuing crisis in Afghanistan is also a factor, with more than 2
million Afghans still meriting refugee status. Sudanese (686,000),
Somalis (460,000), and refugees from the Democratic Republic of the
Congo and Burundi (about 400,000 each) make up the other highest totals.
The UNHCR figures do not include the more than 4 million Palestinians in
Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere.
The number of internally displaced people (IDPs), who have fled their
homes but not crossed international borders, has also reached a record high.
At the end of 2006, the total number of conflict-related IDPs worldwide
was estimated at 24.5 million by the Norwegian Refugee Council's
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Hundreds of thousands of people
have been displaced by conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, East Timor
and Sudan, says the report.