(Translated by Rolf Schoeneborn, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Colombia thus tops other nations in armed conflict like Syria (6.6 million) and Iraq (4.4 million) refugees.
By: EFE Agency
More than 65 million were forcibly displaced by the end of 2015, compared to 59 million a year before, according to the annual report issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) this past Monday.
The five countries that have received the most refugees are: Turkey (2.5 million), Pakistan (1.6 million), Lebanon (1.1 million), Iran (949,400), Ethiopia (736,100), and Jordan (664,100).
The list ‘country of origin’ is headed by Syria with 4.9 million refugees, followed by Afghanistan with 2.7 million, and Somalia with 1.1 million.
Colombia with 6.9 million cases, Syria with 6.6 million, and Iraq with 4.4 million are the countries with the most internally displaced persons (IDPS). In the case of Colombia, we are mostly looking at long-term IDPs.
“In Colombia few internally displaced persons returned to their place of residence and the government reported 113,700 newly displaced persons,” according to the UNCR-report for the year 2015.
Now as far as the degree of development is concerned, it can be said that by the end of last year the developing countries received 14 million refugees, whereas developed countries received 2.2 million refugees.
In absolute terms, Turkey accepted the greatest number of refugees, but it is Lebanon in terms of population size (183 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants), while the Democratic Republic of the Congo took first place in relation to its economy.
In 2015, a new asylum application record was also achieved in the industrialized countries. The application record reached two million petitions, and there are now more than 3.2 million applications pending altogether.
Germany counted 441,000 applications and is heading the list with the United States in second place, registering 172,000 cases, a large part of which involved Central Americans, fleeing criminal gang violence.
According to UNCR data, 51% of all the refugees in the world are minors, many of whom have left their countries alone, as show by almost 100,000 asylum applications by minors without family. (Note: Half of the 65 million refugees in 2015 were children.)
This is the highest total ever recorded by the organization “and it shows that the global displacement phenomenon disproportionately affects the lives of young people” laments the report.
There are scarcely any solutions to the forced displacement problem, given the fact that only 201,000 refugees could go back to their home countries last year, mainly to Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia.
Another 107,000 refugees were resettled in thirty different countries; a figure that merely represents 0.66% of all the refugees registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.