A UN official says that every time you blink someone is displaced in the world. The United Nations Agency for Refugees official Tina Ghelli was confirming a new UN report that documents that 45.2 million people in the world were displaced by the end of last year.
The United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR), Global Trends 2012, which estimated increase of 7.6 million people worldwide who are now “newly displaced” due to persecution and conflict.
Benjamin Moshatama spoke to Tina Ghelli about the report.
Tina Ghelli said that these new findings show that more people are now refugees than any other time since 1994.
According to a new report, Kenya hosts the largest number of refugees in Africa, while South Africa continues to have the most new individual asylum applications registered recently in the continent. Kenya ranked fourth in the world as part of the top ten countries that hosted the most number of refugees with 564,900 refugees, while South Africa ranks first in the registration of new asylum seekers, with 61,500 new asylum seekers registered in 2012 alone.
Ghelli said the individual asylum application increased, in 2012 compared to 2011, by over 100,000 new applications. However, Ghelli outlined that in Africa the situation is more complex because not every host country records application.
In our next blog, we will wrap up the series by looking at solutions for refugees such as repatriation, resettlement and local integration.