Larry Elliott - Number of people displaced by conflict 'equivalent to UK population of 65m'
The World Bank and
the United Nations have highlighted the impact of conflicts on civilians in a
report showing that the number of displaced people around the globe is
equivalent to the UK’s population of 65 million. A study launched
jointly by the Bank and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)
shows that the root of the problem are 10 conflicts responsible for the
majority of forced displacement every year for the past quarter of a century.
The report said the
issue was emerging as an important development challenge that threatened a
backlash against refugees. “Extreme poverty is
now increasingly concentrated among vulnerable groups, including people who had
to flee in the face of conflict and violence, and their presence affects
development prospects in the communities that are hosting them,” the report
said. “Large movements of
people are also fuelling xenophobic reactions, even in high-income countries,
and this could threaten the consensus that is underpinning global economic
growth.”
The study singled out
Afghanistan, Burundi, the Caucasus, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and the former Yugoslavia as responsible for
a crisis that affects 1% of the world’s population. Despite the
controversy over refugees and often strong opposition to them in developed
countries, the Bank and the UN said that neighbouring developing countries
shouldered almost all of the responsibility for coping with the impact of the
violent struggles.
The report said that
89% of refugees and 99% of internally displaced people were hosted by around 15
developing countries, a pattern unchanged since 1991. At the end of 2015,
Syria’s neighbours – Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey – hosted 27% of all refugees
worldwide; Iran and Pakistan, Afghanistan’s neighbours, hosted 16%; and
Ethiopia and Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan’s neighbours, hosted 7%.
“Forced displacement
denies development opportunities to millions, creating a major obstacle to our
efforts to end extreme poverty by 2030,” said the World Bank’s president, Jim
Yong Kim...
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