UN Refugee Agency warned that 4.6M Afghans remain displaced globally. As Yeni Safak reports on Saturday, all these people need daily support and the international community should intensify their efforts, especially ahead of next week’s first-ever Global Refugee Forum in Geneva. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is reportedly due to co-chair the forum.
Afghans represent the longest displaced and the longest dispossessed population under UNHCR’s mandate worldwide. According to the official data of the UN Refugee Agency, some 4.6 million globally displaced Afghans and their host communities need attention and continuing support.
Ahead of next week’s first-ever Global Refugee Forum in the Swiss capital, the UNHCR is stressing that the world is entering the fifth decade of Afghan displacement. The body’s spokesman Babar Baloch at a UN briefing in Geneva said that the overwhelming majority of some 90% of Afghan refugees remain in Pakistan and Iran.
Among the approximately 4.6 million Afghans who remain uprooted globally, around 2.7 million are registered as refugees, with another 2 million displaced inside the country itself.
“Afghans are also the single largest group of asylum-seekers arriving in Europe, due to a sharp deterioration in security in Afghanistan, and increasing financial pressure on hosting nations,” said Baloch.
Prior to starting the three-day Global Refugee Forum on Monday, for the international community important to remember “it is imperative that those affected by decades of Afghan displacement remain a shared priority.”
Refugees remain a vulnerable issue for Iran and Pakistan
Iran’s official figures estimate that some 480,000 Afghan refugees and undocumented children are currently enrolled in school for 2019-2020, indicating a continuing increase from previous years.
Over one decade, the projects under the Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas initiative have benefitted more than 12.4 million Pakistanis and Afghan refugees in total.
When it is about the refugees from Syria, Turkey is the largest host country and provides international protection to more than 3.5 million people who fled the neighbouring country, more than any other country in the world.
