Migrants arrive in canoes at an immigration reception station after crossing the Darien jungle en route to the United States.
Photo: EFE – Welcome Velasco
The world reached a new record of forcibly displaced people, with a total of 120 million people, according to estimates as of April 2024. This is stated by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in its most recent report: “Global trends in forced displacement”.
“If the globally displaced population were a country, it would be the twelfth largest in the world (approximately the size of Japan),” the Agency illustrates. The report speaks of more than 117 million displaced people by the end of 2023; However, according to estimates, the phenomenon has continued to increase in the first four months of 2024, so by the end of April of this year there is talk of more than 120 million.
In this, what is happening in Colombia draws attention for being, on the one hand, one of the countries with the highest internal displacement (with 6.9 million, surpassed by Sudan and Syria, which have 9.1 million and 7.2 million of internally displaced persons, respectively), but at the same time one of the main recipients.
The latter is related to the situation in Venezuela, the third country in number of refugees, with more than six million, only surpassed by Syria and Afghanistan, with around 6.4 million each. The UN Agency has highlighted in its report that Colombia is the country that has welcomed the most Venezuelans, with almost three million, followed by Peru, Ecuador and Chile.
The regional director of the UNHCR for the Americas, José Samaniego, quoted by AFP, welcomed the strategy adopted in many countries “to address the root causes of displacement in the countries of origin, to respond to the humanitarian and protection needs of the people in transit, and strengthen protection, inclusion and solutions in destination and return countries.”
The UNHCR report speaks of 6.1 million Venezuelans who have left their country. Other sources, such as reports from the R4V platform (due to more up-to-date figures and other categories taken into account), have estimated the exodus at almost seven million people. Based on this, Ronal Rodríguez, spokesperson for the Venezuela Observatory of the Universidad del Rosario, recalls that “more than 1.5 million Venezuelans left last year, when the regional response has decreased. The capacity for coordination between governments is not occurring, and particularly international cooperation no longer has the Venezuelan crisis as one of its priorities.”
Therefore, the teacher disagrees that the answer is going in the right direction. He mentions the containment approach that different countries are giving to immigration policy, with proposals such as the wall in Darién, with which the elected president of Panama, José Mulino, arrived; the recent restrictive measures for asylum applications by the United States administration, and the proposals of the virtual Republican candidate in that country, Donald Trump.
He adds that Colombia “had been leading” in the regional response with outstanding measures on an international scale, such as the Temporary Protection Statute for the Venezuelan population. However, the deadline to apply for it has already ended, and although Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo has made announcements about a plan to regularize 600,000 migrants, the majority Venezuelans, in this population there is still a lot of uncertainty about the support that this would offer. . Rodríguez considers that “under the Petro administration there is no clear direction, beyond a couple of sentences from the president, nothing that allows us to say that Colombia is exercising leadership in the matter.” He adds that it is the opportunity for there to be a “re-impulse, and for Colombia to be a country that sets an example of integration,” not of containment, as is also being seen in Europe and other countries in the region.
Why the increase?
This is the 12th year in which consecutive increases have been recorded in the global numbers of forced displacement. The agency summarizes that this is mainly due to persecutions, conflicts, violence, human rights violations or events that have seriously altered public order.
“A factor that has been decisive in the increase in numbers has been the devastating conflict in Sudan: at the end of 2023, a total of 10.8 million Sudanese people had been displaced,” highlights the UNHCR.
Added to this are the situations of violence in Burma, after the military coup of 2021, as well as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since last year.
Regarding the Gaza Strip, UNRWA (United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East) estimates that, by the end of 2023, around 1.7 million people in the Gaza Strip (75% of the population ) were forced to move “due to catastrophic levels of violence, mostly Palestinian refugees.”
Meanwhile, “Syria remains the world’s largest displacement crisis, with 13.8 million people forcibly displaced inside and outside the country.”
“It is time for the parties to the conflict to respect international law and the basic laws of war. “The reality is that without greater cooperation and joint efforts to address conflict, human rights violations or the climate crisis, displacement numbers will continue to rise, leading to more suffering and costly humanitarian responses,” he said. Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, after the presentation of the report.
The report also provides figures that refute the perception that refugees and other migrants go mainly to rich countries. “The vast majority of refugees are hosted in neighboring countries, with 75% residing in low- or middle-income countries.”
Among the positive results is that more than five million internally displaced people and one million refugees returned home in 2023. “These figures show some progress towards longer-term solutions. Another positive fact is that resettlement arrivals increased to 154,300 in 2023,” highlights the Agency.
