There are several ways to measure the terrible price associated with the various wars, ethnic conflicts, political upheavals, religious strife and social unrest that currently bedevil the nations of the world. Some tally the cost in the number of dead and wounded. Others use the cold calculus of economics. Another measure is the number of refugees created by the conflict and persecution. By the latter standard, 2009 was a terrible time for those forced from their homes and countries and unable to return.
There were about 15.2 million refugees last year, according to a Tuesday report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Two-thirds of them come under the UNHCR mandate, including about 3 million Afghans, 1.8 million Iraqis and 680,000 Somalis. Also included in the report are the 4.8 million Palestinians covered by a different U.N. agency.
Whatever the number of refugees and whatever agency is in charge, the statistic is sad commentary on the pervasiveness of seemingly intractable conflicts and the world community’s inability to ameliorate them. The refugee crisis, in fact, is far more dire than the number 15.2 million suggests.
The United Nations defines refugees as those individuals who cross international borders to seek safety. There are, in fact, many more individuals that should be classified as refugees, but do not meet the strict U.N. definition of that status. They are not included in the report.
The UNHCR does mention the more than 27.1 million internal refugees, or “displaced people,” who remain in their own country but can not return to their homes. That surely defines them as refugees, even if the U.N. report does not. A more accurate number of refugees, then, is more than 43 million. Even that number could be low.
On-going violence and the reticence of many individuals to interact with authorities make it hard to count with accuracy both external and internal refugees. Some experts say the U.N. report misses the true total by hundreds of thousands of individuals or more.
Relief in the short-term seems unlikely. Only a relative handful of refugees — about 250,000 — were able to return to their homes last year. That’s the lowest number since 1990, and it continues an unsettling trend. The total number of returning refugees has declined every year since 2004.
Some refugees are absorbed by nations free of the instability that marks places like Somalia, the Congo and Afghanistan. Nearly 80,000 were admitted to the United States last year. Such resettlement programs are welcome, but they do not address the root problem. Long-term solutions are needed, but world leaders seem too busy to begin that discussion.
As long as there is political, religious and civil strife, there will be refugees. The number of conflicts that create refugees is growing — the current crisis in Kyrgyzstan, for example — despite sporadic diplomatic efforts to resolve them. That strongly suggests that the number of refugees will expand rather than decline in coming years.