3 mn driven from homes in 2020 despite Covid crisis: UN Refugee Agency

The UN refugee agency says war, violence, persecution and human rights violations caused nearly 3 million people to flee their homes last year, even though the COVID-19 crisis restricted movement worldwide as countries shut borders and ordered lockdowns.

Key Highlights

• In its latest Global Trends report released recently, UNHCR says the cumulative total of displaced people has risen to 82.4 million roughly the population of Germany. It marks the ninth straight annual increase in the number of people forcibly displaced.
• Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said conflict and the impact of climate change in places such as Mozambique, Ethiopia’s Tigray region and Africa’s broad Sahel area were among the leading sources of new movements of refugees and internally displaced people in 2020. 
• They added hundreds of thousands more people to the overall count, which has for years been dominated by the millions who have fled countries such as Syria and Afghanistan due to protracted wars or fighting. 
• UNHCR, which has its headquarters in Geneva, said that 99 of the more than 160 countries that closed their borders because of COVID-19 didn’t make exceptions for people seeking protection as refugees or asylum-seekers.

SOURCE: Business Standard

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