They fled across the
borders of Libya as the country slid into civil war. They ran for their
lives through the dense bush in western Cote d’Ivoire, to reach shelter
in Liberia. And, as famine loomed in Somalia, they poured into the camps
of Dadaab in Kenya and Dolo Ado in Ethiopia desperate for food, water
and medical attention.
ROME -- Of the 99 million people who received WFP food
assistance last year, one in five was a displaced person. Forced to
flee across borders as refugees, or internally displaced within their
own countries by fighting or by natural disasters, they are among the
world’s most vulnerable people. Every year on World Refugee Day (20
June), we recognize their struggle.
WFP Assisting Refugees
In 2011, WFP provided food assistance to:
• Refugees: 2,595,785
• IDPs: 15,093,137
• Returnees: 3,061,072
Unfortunately, many refugee crises continue for a long time. For
example, WFP provides food assistance near the Sudan-Eritrea border in
camps for Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees that were set up in the
1960s.
Today, among the newest camps are those in Mauritania, Niger and
Burkina Faso, where WFP is helping tens of thousands of Malians who fled
their homes following a recent coup d’etat.
WFP works closely with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide
emergency rations to new arrivals and longer-term food assistance once
refugees are officially registered.
WFP also works with the International Organization for Migration and
governments to assist ‘returnees’ with reintegration packages to help
them get back on their feet when they finally go home. Today, WFP is
assisting thousands of returnees who are going home to South Sudan,
which became the newest country in the world last July.
3 places where WFP is assisting refugees right now:
More than 42 million people around the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes and communities. More than a million fled their countries in the last eighteen months alone due to a wave of conflicts, in Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Syria. These numbers represent far more than statistics; they are individuals and families whose lives have been upended, whose communities have been destroyed, and whose future remains uncertain.
World Refugee Day is a moment to remember all those affected, and a time to intensify our support.
Four out of five refugees are in developing countries, and have benefitted from the remarkable generosity of host countries that themselves face serious deprivations. The Islamic Republics of Pakistan and Iran host the largest number of refugees, with over two and half million between them. Tunisia and Liberia are also among countries that, despite their own national challenges, maintained open borders and shared scarce water, land and other resources for those suffering the impact of armed violence.
Kenya’s third biggest city is a refugee camp and hosts over half a million Somalis, many in their third decade of exile. Niger, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso — suffering famine and drought — now host some 175,000 refugees fleeing conflict in Mali. These countries cannot be left to shoulder this burden alone.
The United Nations — and in particular the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees — is working to address all of these challenges, while also providing protection and assistance to 15.5 million persons displaced within their own countries. We are also focusing on preventing and reducing statelessness. But humanitarian assistance is not enough.
The recent UNHCR Global Trends report shows that displacement is outpacing solutions. We must work together to mobilize the political will and leadership to prevent and end the conflicts that trigger refugee flows. Where security is restored, we must address the underlying causes of conflict, allowing sustainable refugee return through access to livelihoods, services and the rule of law.
Despite budget constraints everywhere, we must not turn away from those in need. Refugees leave because they have no choice. We must choose to help.
Global Trends Report: 800,000 new refugees in 2011, highest this century
GENEVA, June 18 (UNHCR)
A report
released today by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees shows 2011 to
have been a record year for forced displacement across borders, with
more people becoming refugees than at any time since 2000.
UNHCR's "Global Trends 2011" report details for the first time the
extent of forced displacement from a string of major humanitarian crises
that began in late 2010 in Côte d'Ivoire, and was quickly followed by
others in Libya, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere. In all, 4.3 million
people were newly displaced, with a full 800,000 of these fleeing their
countries and becoming refugees.
"2011 saw suffering on an epic scale. For so many lives to have been
thrown into turmoil over so short a space of time means enormous
personal cost for all who were affected," said the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees António Guterres. "We can be grateful only that the
international system for protecting such people held firm for the most
part and that borders stayed open. These are testing times."
Worldwide, 42.5 million people ended 2011 either as refugees (15.2
million), internally displaced (26.4 million) or in the process of
seeking asylum (895,000). Despite the high number of new refugees, the
overall figure was lower than the 2010 total of 43.7 million people, due
mainly to the offsetting effect of large numbers of internally
displaced people (IDPs) returning home: 3.2 million, the highest rate of
returns of IDPs in more than a decade. Among refugees, and
notwithstanding an increase in voluntary repatriation over 2010 levels,
2011 was the third lowest year for returns (532,000) in a decade.
Viewed on a 10-year basis, the report shows several worrying trends:
One is that forced displacement is affecting larger numbers of people
globally, with the annual level exceeding 42 million people for each of
the last five years. Another is that a person who becomes a refugee is
likely to remain as one for many years –
often stuck in a camp or living precariously in an urban location. Of
the 10.4 million refugees under UNHCR's mandate, almost three quarters
(7.1 million) have been in exile for at least five years awaiting a
solution.
Overall, Afghanistan remains the biggest producer of refugees (2.7
million) followed by Iraq (1.4 million), Somalia (1.1 million), Sudan
(500,000) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (491,000).
Around four-fifths of the world's refugees flee to their neighbouring
countries, reflected in the large refugee populations seen, for
example, in Pakistan (1.7 million people), Iran (886,500), Kenya
(566,500) and Chad (366,500).
Among industrialized countries, Germany ranks as the largest hosting
country with 571,700 refugees. South Africa, meanwhile, was the largest
recipient of individual asylum applications (107,000), a status it has
held for the past four years.
UNHCR's original mandate was to help refugees, but in the six decades
since the agency was established in 1950 its work has grown to include
helping many of the world's internally displaced people and those who
are stateless (those lacking recognized citizenship and the human rights
that accompany this).
The Global Trends 2011 report notes that only 64 governments provided
data on stateless people, meaning that UNHCR was able to capture
numbers for only around a quarter of the estimated 12 million stateless
people worldwide.
Of the 42.5 million people who were in a state of forced displacement
as of the end of last year, not all fall under UNHCR's care: Some 4.8
million refugees, for example, are registered with the UN Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Among the 26.4 million internally
displaced, 15.5 million receive UNHCR assistance and protection.
Overall, UNHCR's refugee and IDP caseload of 25.9 million people grew by
700,000 people in 2011.
The Global Trends report is UNHCR's main annual report on the state
of forced displacement. Additional data is published annually in the
agency's Statistical Yearbooks, and in twice-yearly reports on asylum applications in industrialized nations.
“Essentially,
all life depends upon the soil. There can be no life without soil and
no soil without life; they have evolved together”, American
naturalist Charles Kellogg wrote in 1938. Fertile soil is indeed among
the world’s most significant non-renewable and finite resources. It is a
key element, which sustains life on the Earth and provides us with
water, food, fodder and fuels.
But, as the global population is growing, competing claims on this
finite resource are sharply increasing. Productive land is under
pressure from agriculture and pastoral use as well as infrastructure
growth, urbanization and extraction of minerals. To make things worse,
policy-makers often overlook or misguide land use.
By 2030, the demand for food is expected to grow by 50 percent and
for energy and water for 45 and 30 percent respectively. The demand for
food alone is likely to claim an additional 120 million hectares of
productive land – an area equal to the size of South Africa. Unless
degraded land is rehabilitated, forests and other lands will have to
make way for the required food production.
The rates of land depletion are especially worrying in the drylands,
areas highly vulnerable to degradation due to aridity and water
scarcity. Land degradation is called desertification here because it
often creates desert-like conditions. Each year due to desertification
and drought, 12 million hectares of land - the area equal to half the
size of UK - are lost. This is an area, where 20 million tons of grain
could have been gown.
Drylands make up 44 percent of all the world’s cultivated systems and
account for 50 percent of its livestock. If we want to be able to meet
the three biggest global challenges in the next twenty years – food,
water and energy security – we need to do everything it takes to combat
desertification and to restore degraded lands.
The global observance of the World Day to Combat Desertification this
year takes place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, just a few days before the
Rio+20 Conference. To this end, world leaders at Rio+20 need to adopt a
stand-alone goal on sustainable land use for all and by all. To achieve
this goal, we need to avoid land degradation in the non-degraded areas
and restore soil fertility in the already degraded lands. We also need
to avoid deforestation and adopt drought preparedness policies in all
drought-prone countries and regions.
In the past, zero net land degradation
was unattainable. But success stories in land restoration, scientific
findings and technical know-how today indicate that the goal is
realistic. Practical solutions to desertification exist and are already
being employed by local communities around the world. Sustaining healthy
soil and restoring degraded land ensure food security, alleviate rural
poverty and hunger and build resilience to major environmental
challenges.
More than two billion hectares of land worldwide are suitable for
rehabilitation through agro-forestry and landscape restoration. Of that,
about 1.5 billion hectares are suitable for mosaic restoration by means
of agroforestry and smallholder agriculture. We need to promote
sustainable land and water management techniques, agroforestry and
re-greening initiatives and support them on the political level and
through new inclusive business models. Only this way can we become a
land-degradation neutral society.
To make it happen, we need your support. Governments should introduce
sustainable land-use into their policies, make it their priority and
set up national targets to halt land degradation. Businesses should
invest in practices that increase efficiency in land-use. Scientists,
media and civil society should help us spread the word that this goal is
crucial. Together, we can make this paradigm shift.
It is my pleasure to wish you all a memorable celebration of the
World Day to Combat Desertification. This is an important reminder for
us that despite some progress, land degradation, desertification and
drought are still our reality. We should not let them dry up our soil,
the very foundation of the Future We Want.
Therefore, let us go land-degradation neutral.
-------------
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
‘Without Healthy Soil, Life on Earth is Unsustainable,’ Says Secretary-General, Urging States to Ensure Sustainable Land Management Part of Rio+20 Legacy
Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on the World Day to Combat Desertification, which is observed 17 June:
The World Day to Combat Desertification falls this year on the eve of the
United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development. Global efforts to halt and reverse land degradation are
integral to creating the future we want. Sustainable land use is a
prerequisite for lifting billions from poverty, enabling food and
nutrition security, and safeguarding water supplies. It is a
cornerstone of sustainable development.
The people who live in the
world’s arid lands, which occupy more than 40 per cent of our planet’s
land area, are among the poorest and most vulnerable to hunger. We will
not achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 without preserving
the soils on which their subsistence depends.
Nor will we be able to
guarantee our freshwater resources, 70 per cent of which are already
used for agriculture. By 2030, the demand for water is projected to
rise by 35 per cent. Unless we change our land-use practices, we face
the prospect of diminishing and inadequate water supplies, as well as
more frequent and intense droughts.
Further, by 2050, we will
need sufficient productive land to feed an estimated 9 billion people
with per capita consumption levels greater than those of today. This
will be impossible if soil loss continues at its current pace — an
annual loss of 75 billion tons. Important land-use decisions need to be
made, as well as critical investments ranging from extension services
for small farmers to the latest technology to support environmentally
sustainable mass food production.
Rio+20 is our opportunity
to showcase the many smart and effective land management systems and
options that exist or are in the pipeline. Twenty years on from the
adoption of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, let
us ensure that a commitment to sustainable land management features
prominently in the official outcome at Rio and in the wider mobilization
for sustainability that will also be part of Rio’s legacy. Without
healthy soil, life on Earth is unsustainable.
