The pandemic has armored borders around the world but despite this the number of people fleeing wars, violence, persecution and human rights violations has not stopped growing. In 2020 – testifies the latest Global Trends report by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency – it reached 82.4 million, with an increase of 4 percent on 2019, when the previous record of 79 was reached. 5 million. Today, one percent of the world‘s population is on the run, and there are twice as many people forced to flee their homes than just ten years ago, when the total was just under 40 million.
It is mainly young people who challenge fate, 42 per cent have not turned 18, pushed to travel in the hope of a better future for themselves and their children. A future that increasingly remains a chimera, as evidenced by the still fresh images of the children rejected in Ceuta a month ago, or the more than 800 migrants who died since the beginning of the year trying to cross the Mediterranean. Then there are the children. New UNHCR estimates show that nearly one million of them were born refugees between 2018 and 2020. “Many – the report reads – could remain refugees for years to come”. An immense tragedy that without urgent answers risks exploding at any moment, with chain repercussions on the entire planet. For this reason, UNHCR urges world leaders to “intensify their efforts to promote peace, stability and cooperation”.
“The Refugee Convention of 1951 and the Global Compact on Refugees – explains the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi – provide the legal framework and the tools to respond to the forced movements of populations, but we need a will a much more decisive policy to tackle, first of all, the conflicts and persecutions that force people to flee ». It is no coincidence that more than two thirds of the desperate people who press on our borders come from countries bloodied by years of civil wars and persecutions: first of all Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Burma. Then there are the internally displaced people, an army that has grown by over 2.3 million mainly due to the crises in Ethiopia, Sudan, Sahel countries, Mozambique, Yemen and Colombia “Behind every number – underlines Filippo Grandi – there is a being human being forced to leave their home and a story of escape, expropriation and suffering. These people deserve our attention and support not only with humanitarian aid, but with solutions that improve their situation ».