The UN refugee agency said persecution and conflict in places like Syria and Afghanistan raised the total number of refugees and internally displaced people worldwide to a record 65.3 million at the end of last year.
The previous year, 2014, had already seen the highest number of refugees worldwide since World War II, with 60 million displaced people, but last year — when Europe staggered under the arrival of large numbers of refugees — topped that record by nearly 10 percent, the UNHCR said yesterday in unveiling its annual Global Trends Report.
The Geneva-based agency urged leaders from Europe and elsewhere to do more to end the wars that are fanning the exodus of people from their homelands.
“I hope that the message carried by those forcibly displaced reaches the leaderships: We need action, political action, to stop conflicts,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said. “The message that they have carried is: ‘If you don’t solve problems, problems will come to you.’”
With stark detail, UNHCR said that on average, 24 people had been displaced every minute of every day last year — or 34,000 people a day — up from 6 every minutes in 2005. Global displacement has roughly doubled since 1997, and risen by 50 percent since 2011 alone — when the Syria war began.
More than half of all refugees came from three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. Turkey was the “top host” country for the second year running, taking in 2.5 million people — nearly all from neighboring Syria.
Afghan neighbor Pakistan had 1.6 million, while Lebanon, next to Syria, hosted 1.1 million.
Grandi said policymakers and advocacy groups admittedly face daunting challenges helping the largest subset of displaced people: About 40.8 million internally displaced in countries in conflict. Another 21.3 million were refugees and about 3.2 million more were seeking asylum.
More than 1 million people fled to Europe last year, causing a political crisis in the EU.
Grandi called on countries to work to fight the xenophobia that has accompanied the rise in refugee populations, and decried both physical barriers — like fences erected by some European countries — as well as legislative ones that limit access to richer, more peaceful EU states.
Such European policies were “spreading a negative example around the world,” he said.
“There is no plan B for Europe in the long run,” Grandi said. “Europe will continue to receive people seeking asylum. Their numbers may vary ... but it is inevitable.”
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
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