The number of people who have fled their homes around the world in 2022 has surpassed 100 million, spurring the United Nations to help them in various ways, the UNHCR said on the 26th (local time).
UNHCR Chief Executive Philip Grandi said the number was “the most new record ever.” UN News also reported. The number of refugees soared to 100 million from 90 million in 2021. The main reason is the prolonged civil war in various parts of the world and the outbreak of new wars. More people have abandoned their homes in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Syria and Myanmar. Many of the desperate refugees are risking their lives to cross the dangerous Mediterranean Sea for Europe, considering it their favorite destination, UN News reported. Many of them are killed in the hands of human trafficking and smuggling organizations, the U.N. news agency warned.
Now in Yemen, more than seven years after the civil war, humanitarian devastation has reached an extreme, forcing more than 4.3 million people to be forced out of their homes and wandering as refugees.
In May, the United Nations Organization for Migration (IOM) and the European Union’s aid agency ECHO announced that greater efforts should be made to rescue 325,000 refugees from the Yemeni civil war at home and abroad. The Syrian civil war is already in its 11th year, and nearly 5 million children in Korea have never seen a peaceful homeland, UN News reported. More than 80,000 Syrians live in Jordan’s huge Zagatari refugee camp, most of whom have fled the country after abandoning the lives of blind Syria.United Nations Special Envoy Hans Grundberg calls for an extension of the ceasefire agreement in Yemen during a U.N. Security Council meeting on October 13.
Jordan has accepted about 675,000 Syrian refugees, most of whom live in communities and large cities, with only 17 percent in two large camps in Zagatari and Azrak. Myanmar’s Rohingya have also fled their homes on a large scale since five years ago, and now there are about a million people living in the Cox Bazaar camp in neighboring Bangladesh across the border. In March this year, the United Nations launched an emergency aid operation to raise $881 million (1.116.7556 trillion won) in refugee aid, given that such refugees’ situation and countries like Bangladesh they depend on also need support. On top of that, 7.8 million Ukrainian refugees have also entered Europe as of the end of December, adding to the burden of relief. In Tigrai, Ethiopia, millions have been evacuated due to civil war that began in 2020. By the end of this year, the United Nations reported that some of them had entered their hometowns through international mediation and started rebuilding their lives. In August this year, the United Nations urged fundraising for 750,000 refugees in Ethiopia, and the World Food Program (WFP) under the United Nations warned that if the fundraising fails, numerous refugees will be driven to starvation. UNHCR is concerned that although governments around the world have already promised $1.13 billion in refugee aid, the number of refugees eligible for aid is also increasing to a record high, especially this winter．
EJ SONG
ASIA JOURNAL
