‘Sizeable number of refugees need to be resettled’
15 Jun 2016 4:37 AM IST
The United Nations said on Monday it will try to resettle a record 170,000 refugees urgently in need of a new home next year as it grapples with an unprecedented displacment crisis. The projected resettlement figure from the UN refugee agency represents an increase of nearly 30,000 people compared with this year.
But it is still less than 15 per cent of the 1.19 million refugees worldwide who will be “in need of resettlement” in 2017, the UNHCR acknowledged in a report released on Monday.
That group mainly consists of refugees who the UN believes will not be able to return home or integrate in their current host country. But resettling 1.19 million people over a 12-month period is not feasible based on recent trends, UNHCR spokesman Leo Dobbs told AFP.
The agency therefore expects to recommend that the 170,000 people most in need of resettlement should be moved to third countries. Dobbs noted that the final decision in each case rests with prospective host countries, but in recent years the overwhelming majority of those recommended for resettlement have been given new homes.
In 2015, UNHCR referred a record 134,000 people for resettlement and 104,000 in 2014. The projected figure for this year is 143,000.
By nationality, Syrians led the list of resettlement cases last year at 20 per cent, followed by people from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Somalia. The European Union has agreed to a responsibility-sharing scheme, which foresees the relocation of 160,000 refugees who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea and landed in Italy or Greece. But only a few hundred have been resettled to date under the EU plan.
UN rights chief slams increasing migrant detention in Europe
The UN’s human rights chief voiced alarm on Monday at the increasing detention of migrants in Europe, including unaccompanied children, amid widespread anti-migrant rhetoric across the continent.
As Europe faces its biggest migration crisis since the aftermath of World War II, UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he had sent staff members to assess areas along the main migration routes in the central Mediterranean and Balkans. “They have observed a worrying increase in detention of migrants in Europe, including in the hotspots, (which are) essentially vast mandatory confinement areas which have been set up in Greece and Italy,” he told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s second annual session.
“Even unaccompanied children are frequently placed in prison cells or centres ringed with barbed-wire,” he said, insisting “detention is never in the best interests of the child.” Zeid urged the EU to collect data on migrant detentions by member states, warning that “the figures would, I fear, be very shocking.”
More than one million people made the journey to Europe in 2015, the majority fleeing war in Syria and the Middle East, and a further 208,000 have come since January, according to UN figures.
More than 2,850 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year.
Faced with the influx, the UN rights chief warned that in many countries were showing “a strong trend that overturns international commitments, refuses basic humanity, and slams doors in the face of human beings in need.”
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