UN: Forced displacement passes 80 million

While a full picture for 2020 is yet to be established, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, estimates that global forced displacement surpassed 80 million at mid-year, according to a report on trends in global forced displacement released today in Geneva.

At the beginning of this year, some 79.5 million people had been forced from their homes due to persecution, conflict, and human rights violations. This total included 45.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs), 29.6 million refugees, others forcibly displaced outside their country, and 4.2 million asylum seekers. Existing and new conflicts and the novel coronavirus have dramatically affected their lives in 2020.

For people forced to flee, COVID-19 became an additional protection and livelihoods crisis on top of the global public health emergency. The virus has disrupted every aspect of human life and severely worsened existing challenges for the forcibly displaced and stateless.

Some of the measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 made it harder for refugees to reach safety. At the peak of the pandemic's first wave in April, 168 countries fully or partially closed their borders, with 90 countries making no exception for people seeking asylum. Since then, and with UNHCR's support and expertise, 111 countries have found pragmatic solutions to ensure their asylum system is wholly or partially operational while ensuring necessary measures are taken to curb the virus's spread.

Despite such measures, new asylum applications dropped by a third compared to the same period in 2019. Just 822,600 displaced people returned home; most – 635,000 – were IDPs. With 102,600 voluntary repatriations in the first half of the year, refugee returns dropped by 22 percent compared to 2019.

Although the actual number of stateless people remains unknown, 79 countries have reported 4.2 million stateless people on their territory.