The number of displaced people in the world has risen to a new record high due to war, persecution, and violence, according to the latest report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The UN Refugee Agency’s Global Trends report says there were 65.6 million people forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2016 – some 300,000 more than the previous year. The total number represents the enormous population in need of protection by international agencies and states, according to the UNHCR.
Of this number, 22.5 million are refugees – those forced to leave their country; 40.3 million are internally displaced persons (IDPs) or those who find temporary shelter within the same country; and 2.8 million are asylum seekers – people who have fled their country and are seeing international protection as refugees.
The figures released ahead of World Refugee Day, which falls on Tuesday, June 20, showed that a full 10.3 million of the world's displaced people fled their homes last year alone, including 3.4 million who crossed international borders to become refugees.
The conflict in Syria has produced the largest number of refugees at 5.5 million and displaced people overall at 12 million people.
A full 84 percent of refugees are living in low- and middle-income countries like Lebanon, Pakistan, and Ethiopia the UNHCR said, decrying a "huge imbalance".
Refugees and IDPs in Pakistan
IDPs are mainly concentrated in the country’s north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) (up to 1.5 million), but also live in Balochistan province and other parts of Pakistan (up to 275,000). Numbers likely underestimate the scale of displacement as they exclude unregistered IDPs living in KP and FATA and IDPs living in other parts of Pakistan, including in urban centres such as Karachi.
The estimate is based on a combination of sources. For KP and FATA, UNHCR regularly publishes information on numbers of displaced families who are registered as such, based on data provided by provincial authorities (UNHCR, KP and FATA IDP Statistics as of 31 March 2015, on file with IDMC). To calculate the number of individuals displaced, IDMC uses an average family size of 5.2.
Conflict-related displacement since 2004 has been caused by fighting between the Pakistani military and non-state armed groups (NSAGs), clashes between NSAGs, sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims, tribal and local clashes over resources, and human rights abuses committed by both the military and NSAGs.
More than a decade after militancy hit Pakistan, the federal government, instead of sending the IDPs back to their homes, only changed their nomenclature in 2014. On the advice of the Foreign Office, all agencies and departments were asked to refer to IDPs as TDPs (Temporarily Dislocated Persons). Needless to say, it changed nothing.
In Numbers!!!
Refugees and internally displaced persons: refugees (country of origin): 2.6 million (1.6 million registered, 1.0 million undocumented) (Afghanistan) (2015)
IDPs: 1.459 million (primarily those who remain displaced by counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations and violent conflict between armed non-state groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber-Paktunkwa Province; more than 1 million displaced in Northern Waziristan in 2014; individuals also have been displaced by repeated monsoon floods) (2015)
With an additional million coming after the start of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, there are about two million to take care of. According to Fata Disaster Management Authority (FDMA) 81,030 families have displaced from North Waziristan and 91,580 from Khyber Agency.
Majority of these IDPs have taken shelter in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and have also settled in other parts of the country. About 100,000 people of North Waziristan have moved across the border and taken refuge in Afghanistan, which was something new.
FDMA said that National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) had verified 2,020,221 IDPs from the entire Fata. Initially, FDMA had registered one million displaced people only from North Waziristan Agency, but the number decreased after Nadra verification.
Separately, Nadra had verified 62,713 displaced families from South Waziristan, 29,051 from Orakzai and 25,865 from Kurram agencies. Security forces claimed to have cleared Mehsud tribe dominated area of South Waziristan and central sub-division of Kurram Agency from Taliban militants in 2009 and 2012, but displaced families are not sent back to their homes.
Definitions
This entry includes those persons residing in a country as refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs). The definition of a refugee according to a United Nations Convention is "a person who is outside his/her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution."
The UN established the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950 to handle refugee matters worldwide. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has a different operational definition for a Palestinian refugee: "a person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict."
However, UNHCR also assists some 400,000 Palestinian refugees not covered under the UNRWA definition. The term "internally displaced person" is not specifically covered in the UN Convention; it is used to describe people who have fled their homes for reasons similar to refugees, but who remain within their own national territory and are subject to the laws of that state.