The number of asylum seekers in industrialized countries has risen by nearly a quarter, driven by the wars in Syria and Iraq as well as instability in Afghanistan, Eritrea and elsewhere, the UN High Commission for Refugees said yesterday.
In the first six months of this year, the total number of people requesting refugee status in such countries rose to 330,700 a 24 percent increase on the same period last year, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.
“We are clearly into an era of growing conflict,” Guterres said in a statement on his agency’s latest Asylum Trends report.
“The global humanitarian system is already in great difficulty. The international community needs to prepare their populations for the reality that in the absence of solutions to conflict more and more people are going to need refuge and care in the coming months and years,” he added.
Guterres also said that as things stand, it does not appear that resources and access to asylum procedures would become available for those in need.
The report was based on data received from 44 governments in Europe, North America and parts of the Asia-Pacific region.
Based on historical norms of higher numbers of asylum seekers in the second half of each year, it said the total this year could reach 700,000.
That would be a 20-year high for industrialized countries, a level unseen since the refugee crisis sparked by the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
The bulk of new asylum claims was in just six countries: Germany, the US, France, Sweden, Turkey and Italy.
Central Europe, in particular Hungary and Poland, as well as Australia, saw declines in the number of people seeking refugee status.
Overall, Syria was the main country of origin for people seeking asylum, with claims more than doubling to 48,400 from the 18,900 filed in the first half of last year.
Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled due to the offensive by the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, produced 21,300 asylum applications, followed by Afghanistan with 19,300, and Eritrea with 18,900.
The UN refugee agency said that the number of people applying for refugee status in the 44 industrialized countries covered by the report only paints part of the picture.
Worldwide, 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced as of the end of last year, mostly remaining within their homelands’ borders or fleeing to neighboring countries.
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