According to the 2020 Mid-Year Trend Report recently released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of forced displaced persons worldwide is expected to exceed 80 million in the first half of this year.
These include internally displaced persons, refugees, asylum seekers and others who are forced to leave their homes. The ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Somalia and Yemen, as well as rape and killings in the Sahel region of West Africa, are the main causes of large-scale displacement.
Despite the urgent call of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in March for a global ceasefire during the joint fight against the epidemic, conflict and persecution continue. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said that the number of forcibly displaced people has doubled in the past decade, indicating that the international community has failed to maintain peace.
We are breaking the previous sad record, and this number will continue to grow unless the leaders stop the war.
The report pointed out that during the peak of the first wave of epidemic in April, 168 countries completely or partially closed their borders, and 90 of them also targeted asylum seekers.
With the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and others, 111 countries have found practical solutions to guarantee the operation of their asylum systems in whole or in part, while ensuring that necessary measures are taken to curb the spread of the virus.
Measures such as travel restrictions and border closures in response to the epidemic have caused new asylum applications to fall by one-third year-on-year in 2019. However, the root causes of global conflicts remain unresolved.
The report also points out that fewer durable solutions for displaced persons will be found in 2020 than in the same period in previous years. Only about 822,000 displaced people have returned home, most of whom are internally displaced persons.
About 102,000 people returned to their countries of origin in the first half of the year, a decrease of 22% compared with the same period last year.
According to statistics, only 17,400 refugees were resettled in the first half of 2020, half of the same period last year due to the impact of the epidemic.
