Where do refugees actually live?
The controversy over refugee policy that’s helping to tear apart the European Union is about a relatively small number of people. Other parts of the world have been straining from various refugee crises for a long time with much less attention.
BERLIN
Europe is still reeling from last year’s refugee crisis. Anti-immigration fervor contributed to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s recent defeat. It contributed to Brexit and to the rise of far-right politicians in France, the Netherlands, Poland and elsewhere. When asylum seekers from Africa, the Middle East and Asia began pouring into Europe by the thousands, and then tens of thousands, in Fall 2015, international media descended on the Greek island Lesvos to document the human influx. As an American journalist living in Berlin, my work also has revolved around refugees in Europe.
Yet the coverage of Europe’s crisis revealed the injustice and imbalance of our world. A terrorist attack in France garners much more attention than one in Lebanon, Mali, Senegal or Kabul. Europe’s strain under refugees is a greater concern than that of other countries who have received millions of refugees from foreign conflicts. That being the case, I thought it’d be useful to break down where the majority of the world’s refugees actually live.
According to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, 65.3 million people across the globe have been forcibly displaced from their homes at the end of 2015. Roughly 41 million from this number are considered internally displaced, meaning they still live within the borders of their home country. Yemen had the highest number of internally displaced civilians as 2015 came to a close. The conflict in Syria produces the majority of the world’s refugees: 4.9 million. Next is Afghanistan, then Somalia and South Sudan, though these statistics are a bit dated. If anything, especially from Syria and South Sudan, where conflict has worsened, these numbers would have grown as long as civilians are able to leave their countries’ borders, thus becoming official refugees.
According to a more recent report by Amnesty International, 56 percent of the world’s refugees are living in 10 countries, all in the Middle East and Africa, some of which are desperately poor. Tiny Jordan houses the most, with 2.7 million refugees, some of whom, especially Syrians, survive in refugee camps, like Zaatari and Azraq. But the vast majority are living in towns and cities. After Jordan in descending order come Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad.
As politicians in Europe and the United States try to skirt responsibility for accepting more refugees, especially those fleeing conflict in the Middle East, it is good to remember that their nations are only bearing a fraction of the burden of the world’s so-called refugee crisis.
