There are 120 million refugees in the world – double the amount from 10 years ago.
Every 20 minutes, someone in the world is forced to leave their home behind to escape war, persecution or terror, according to the United Nations. A refugee is a person who has a “well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.”
There are several types of forcibly displaced persons. Refugees are people who have fled their home and country. Internally displaced persons are people who have not crossed an international border, but have been forced from their home. Asylum seekers are refugees, but their claim for refugee status has not yet been determined by the receiving country and, finally, stateless persons do not have a recognized nationality and do not belong to any country.
More than half (52%) of all refugees and other people in need of international protection come from just three countries: Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan. In total, 120 million people around the world are refugees. That’s one in every 69 people, or 1.5% of the entire world population. The number has doubled in the last 10 years. The wealthiest countries host just 24% of the world’s refugees. The remaining 76% are hosted by poor, low and middle-income countries. Turkey is the world’s largest refugee-hosting country, with 10% of all refugees who have crossed borders.
“Behind these stark and rising numbers lie countless human tragedies,” said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.
Every one of those 120 million people has a story, a name and a face. One story highlighted by the International Rescue Committee was of Omar, age 72, who moved from Sudan to Libya at a young age but was displaced when war broke out. In 2013, the IRC helped his family resettle in Salt Lake City. ”I was relieved that I had managed to save my family from war and come to America. I am happy and delighted, thank God, that my children studied, graduated, and found jobs.”
There are 70,000 more of those stories in Utah.
This is an excerpt from a longer piece I wrote for the Deseret News. You can read it here.
