The ticking time bomb of refugees

Mohamed Badereldin , Thursday 1 Sep 2022

Worsening conflicts throughout the world have contributed to growing numbers of refugees, as a recent UN report reveals, writes Mohamed Baderledin

The ticking time bomb of refugees
Afghan refugees rest in tents at a makeshift shelter camp in Chaman, a Pakistani town at the border with Afghanistan (photo: AFP)

 

The latest estimate by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) shows that the number of people forced to flee their homes has now reached more than 100 million, compared to 89.3 million at the end of 2021, straining a system that is struggling to cope with the constantly growing number of refugees.

This has been especially the case since many of the countries hosting refugees are themselves now facing existential crises including energy shortages and droughts.

Growing conflicts over new displacements have exacerbated the issue and raised the number of people who have been forcibly displaced, with the UNHCR’s Global Trends Report for 2021 dubbing the year “perhaps most notable for the sheer number of existing conflicts that escalated and new conflicts that flared up.”

Already existing conflicts worsened, such as in Yemen, while other new conflicts rapidly spiralled, such as in Ukraine and Myanmar, leading to a record number of forcibly displaced people.

The conflict in Ethiopia, where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has launched an offensive into the Tigray region to oust militias referred to as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), has resulted in at least 2.5 million more Ethiopians having to abandon their homes in fear of persecution or even death.

The number of forcibly displaced people also rose in Afghanistan, due to the rise of the Taliban after the exit of US forces from the country last year. The number of those who have been internally displaced, forced to leave their homes but remaining in the country, or externally displaced increased dramatically, with estimates showing 900,000 Afghans fleeing Afghanistan in 2021.

Despite more than 790,000 Afghans returning home throughout this year, the number of individuals who have been internally displaced increased for the 15th year in a row.

Worsening conflicts throughout the world have also contributed to the major rise in the number of newly forcibly displaced people in Yemen, the Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Sudan. It is estimated that the number of people who have been forced to flee these countries could reach half a million in each case.

All this comes at a time when countries hosting refugees are themselves facing climate-change-related catastrophes that have resulted in major water arteries drying up, energy shortages, and economic shrinkages bordering on recession.

The continent hosting the most refugees is Europe, which hosts more than seven million refugees.

Turkey was the largest refugee-hosting country in the world in 2021, with more than 3.8 million refugees by the end of 2021 or 15 per cent of all individuals displaced across borders worldwide. With 1.3 million refugees or five per cent of all individuals displaced across borders, Germany is the second-largest refugee-hosting nation in Europe.

However, this year’s drought in Europe has led to the drying up of rivers and has seriously affected agricultural activity. No country has been more affected than Germany, which relies heavily on the Rhine for generating electricity and moving goods by ship, resulting in a likely economic slowdown.

An energy crisis has also gripped Europe after the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. Many countries in Europe including Germany are reliant on Russian gas for their energy, but many EU members including Germany have also announced that they will begin diversifying their source of natural gas and are implementing sanctions on Russia.

Germany has announced that it is successfully stockpiling gas and will meet its October target early, according to a statement by Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck. But this has not stopped energy bills from increasing at unprecedented rates, with benchmark European gas prices increasing by 550 per cent over the last 10 months.

The economic outlook of the Eurozone seems to be darkening due to the conflict in Ukraine, with European economic activity falling for a second straight month in August. The S&P Global Flash Eurozone Purchasing Managers Index has hit its lowest benchmark in 18 months, while increases in the prices of goods and services to accommodate the rise in energy prices have hurt demand.

The European decline in manufacturing, which began in the previous month, has now expanded to services including tourism, which had earlier helped several EU economies stumble through the summer.

In a statement, Andrew Harker of S&P Global Market Intelligence said that “declining output is now being seen across a range of sectors, from basic materials and auto firms through to tourism and real-estate companies as economic weakness becomes more broad-based in nature.”

The many crises facing the European continent will likely have an impact on the refugees housed there, further degrading their living conditions.

An example of how these crises can affect asylum-seekers in Europe took place in the Netherlands last week, the country had earlier declared a water shortage due to the drought in Europe as well as an energy crisis.

The Dutch government has been accused of letting asylum-seekers who have not yet been processed sleep in an outdoor camp that has been described by a team from the Dutch Inspectorate for Health Care and Youth as being “a serious risk of outbreaks of infectious diseases as a result of the total lack of hygiene.”

In an effort to resolve a problem that has seen 700 people sleeping outside in Holland this week, 150 people were moved to two sports halls. Advocates for refugees compared the scenario to congested camps in Greece and Italy that are frequently the first stops for asylum-seekers travelling to Europe.

After the Inspectorate report was released, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was “ashamed” and the government started to reform the complicated process governing claims for asylum in Holland. The refugees were transferred overnight from the original facility close to the northern Dutch city of Groningen to other places, according to a representative from the state migrant housing unit.

Meanwhile, if present trends continue the world refugee crisis could get worse. In a statement on the first page of the 2021 UNHCR report, Filippo Grandi, UN high commissioner for refugees, declared that “every year of the last decade, the numbers have climbed. Either the international community comes together to take action to address this human tragedy, resolve conflicts and find lasting solutions, or this terrible trend will continue.”

*A version of this article appears in print in the 1 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

 

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