The Remaining: Refugees Download Pdf
Giovanna Qiu
The number of refugees resettled in the United States decreased more than in any other country in 2017, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This represents the first time since the adoption of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act that the U.S. resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world.
Despite a sharp single-year decline in refugee resettlement, the U.S. still resettled more refugees (33,000) than any other one country. Following the U.S. were Canada (27,000), Australia (15,000) and the United Kingdom (6,000). Sweden, Germany, Norway and France each resettled about 3,000 refugees. Per capita, Canada led the world by resettling 725 refugees per 1 million residents, followed by Australia (618) and Norway (528). The U.S. resettled 102 refugees per 1 million U.S. residents.
Overall, the world resettled 103,000 refugees in 2017, down from 189,000 in 2016. The broad-based decline included decreases in other leading countries in refugee resettlement, such as Canada and Australia, though the drops in these countries were more modest than those in the U.S.
More than half (56%) of refugees resettled worldwide were citizens of countries in the Middle East-North Africa region, mostly from Syria. Another 23% were from sub-Saharan African countries, while 15% came from Asian countries.
While the global context has now shifted with the COVID-19 pandemic, research continues to affirm the importance of expanded labor market access for refugees and forced migrants. As new analysis from CGD, Refugees International, and the International Rescue Committee shows, refugees will be disproportionately affected by the economic impacts of the pandemic, but refugee-hosting countries can take steps to safeguard refugee livelihoods, ensuring the benefits they provide to host communities continue to flow. Here, we look at progress made in four countries in particular over the past year, and highlight the challenges raised by COVID-19.
Despite the limited policy progress, at the Global Refugee Forum in December 2019, the Government of Peru pledged to provide residence permits to asylum-seekers, promote family reunification for refugees, and acknowledge qualifications for doctors, teachers, and engineers.
Despite this progress, implementation has been slow. The law has yet to be ratified by the Ethiopian parliament, and the specific policy moves mentioned in the law have not yet taken effect. Compounding these delays, COVID-19 has created uncertainty around future implementation. Even before the outbreak, high rates of unemployment in urban areas and the lack of developed markets around camps made it challenging to create economic opportunities for refugees. The politics of refugee integration were also highly contentious.
However, as is in most other countries, COVID-19 has stalled the potential for progress. With most refugees living in cramped conditions in camps with limited quality healthcare, humanitarian actors and government officials are focused on keeping COVID-19 out of camps.
New analysis from CGD, Refugees International, and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) finds that refugees will be disproportionately affected by the economic impacts of the pandemic. Based on data from eight refugee-hosting countries (Colombia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Peru, Turkey, and Uganda) the report finds that refugees are 60 percent more likely to be working in highly impacted sectors such as accommodation and food services, manufacturing, and trade. They are also more likely to be working in the informal market.
As a result, COVID-19 will likely lead to widespread loss of livelihoods and an increase in poverty among refugee populations. These impacts will be exacerbated by the fact that COVID-19 has made it more difficult for refugees to access the labor market, social safety nets, and aid provided by humanitarian organizations.
While the economic crisis and rising xenophobia might push policymakers to exclude refugees from their response, the continuous marginalization of refugees only serves to increase their vulnerability and exacerbate the problem. If the pandemic shows us anything, it is that including refugees as part of the response and the solution is important to build a more inclusive and resilient society that leaves no-one behind.
About a third of those 100 million people are refugees. Refugees live in a legal limbo that can increasingly stretch for decades. And the number of people remaining refugees for five years or longer more than doubled over the past decade, topping 16 million in 2022. These are people who do not have a clear path to residency in any country but are unable to return to their homes because they are unsafe.
Refugees are legally protected under international law from deportation but often do not have safe places to live or the opportunity to legally work in their host countries. Most refugees live outside of formal camps, in informal settlements in cities.
One general exception to this trend is the protection granted by European Union countries to 4 million Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war, including giving them the legal right to work, for several years.
Syrian refugees in Turkey, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India, Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Somali refugees in Kenya are among the large groups of refugees who fled conflict and have lived for decades in another place without the protections of citizenship.
There have been some recent efforts at the international level to address the challenges facing refugees and host countries alike. In 2018, countries in the U.N. agreed to an informal plan to jointly share the responsibility to host refugees and migrants.
These countries committed to a framework for shared responsibilities in their response to refugee crises. But nonprofit groups that work with refugees have said it is unclear whether the plan has resulted in any change, noting that few countries have implemented the strategy into their domestic planning.
Between February and March 2021, Human Rights Watch spoke to 21 Syrian refugees, 6 Palestinian refugees, the caretaker labor minister, and staff from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Anti-Racism Movement (ARM), a grassroots collective in Lebanon that fights discrimination.
The AstraZeneca doses lead to the addition of new priority groups, including teachers and workers in productive sectors (sectors that produce products such as agriculture and manufacturing), to the vaccination rollout starting in April, the caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan said. As of April 5, only 3,638 Palestinians and 1,159 Syrians have been vaccinated, though 19,962 Palestinian refugees and health workers and 6,701 Syrian refugees are eligible in the first phase of the vaccine rollout.
Syrian refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch raised fears of arrest, detention, or even deportation if they registered through a government-managed platform, especially if they do not have legal residency in Lebanon. Due to restrictive Lebanese residency policies, only 20 percent of an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon have the legal right to live in the country, leaving the vast majority vulnerable to arbitrary arrest, detention, harassment, and even deportation.
Although the 200,000 Palestinian refugees do not face the same fears over arrest and deportation, many have very little trust in the Lebanese government, which has systematically discriminated against them and barred them from getting government social services, including health care. They can get health care only through the private sector, which charges prohibitively high fees, or through international organizations like UNRWA.
Mistrust of the Lebanese government runs so deep that Palestinian refugees told Human Rights Watch they fear that even if they were to register, they would not actually receive the vaccine and would have to pay a fee they could not afford.
To ensure equitable vaccine distribution despite the huge supply shortages, Lebanese authorities should follow the World Health Organization (WHO) SAGE values framework for the allocation and prioritization of Covid-19 vaccines, which offers guidance on the prioritization of groups when vaccine supply is limited. The SAGE guidance calls for ensuring national equity in vaccine access, particularly for groups experiencing greater burdens from the pandemic, such as people living in poverty, especially extreme poverty, and low-income migrant workers and refugees, especially those living in close quarters who are unable to physically distance.
In addition to problems around vaccine supply and equitable distribution, the Lebanese government has failed to provide accurate and up-to-date information for Syrian and Palestinian refugees, as well as migrant workers, about the vaccine and how to register to be vaccinated, and reassure them that vaccination efforts will be firewalled from immigration enforcement activities.
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