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UNHCR: Poor Countries Give Asylum to Most of the World's Refugees
Friday, November 8, 2002
(17:34 UTC)
By Lisa Schlein
Voice of America

"Since the mid-90s with the end of the Rwandan conflict and also with the end of the Mozambican repatriation in the early 90s, you see that the refugee population in Africa is steadily declining compared to the other regions. Whereas actually Asia, which includes Afghanistan, as the country of origin is increasing, partly due to new outflows in recent years to first asylum countries."

GENEVA -- VOA
A new report by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) shows that poor countries are providing asylum for most of the world's refugees. This first edition of the "UNHCR Statistical Yearbook" provides a global view of forced displacement over the past decade including refugee trends in industrialized and developing countries.

The report says since 1992, the number of refugees in the world has gone down and new refugee outflows have diminished. It says the global refugee population has stabilized at about 12 million.

The U.N. Refugee agency says there are also 25 million internally displaced people in the world, but its report focuses on refugees and asylum seekers who have sought shelter outside their own countries. The UNHCR itself deals mainly with refugees, while other U.N. and private agencies help internally displaced people.

The report notes Afghans made up one-third of the world refugee population in 2001. The Statistical Yearbook does not include the significant changes which have taken place in Afghanistan this year, with more than 1.7 million Afghan refugees returning home.
(More: VOANews.com News Source)
2002 © Voice of America.

Dan