Number of refugees world-wide has dropped: UNHCR

The number of refugees around the world has dropped from about 20 million last year to 17.1 million this year, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday. This was partly due to successful repatriation efforts in Africa and the end of long-running civil wars in Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told a news conference.
Many countries, including the United States, were also now accepting refugees for resettlement at higher levels after cutbacks due to security concerns in the years following the September 11 attacks, agency officials said.
"There was certainly a decline in resettlement post-September 11. That's because of a changed security environment, more stringent security checks and sometimes profiling by some governments," said Volker Turk, the head of the UNHCR in Malaysia.
The number of refugees resettled in the years following the attacks dropped to 20,000, from between 30,000 to 40,000 annually, he said, but some 40,000 refugees were expected to be resettled this year.
Turk hailed a recent move by the Malaysian government to assure Rohingya ethnic Muslims from Myanmar that they would not be arrested as illegal immigrants if they held UNHCR passes.
"UNHCR welcomes this decision by the government. It is a very positive step forward," Turk said. According to UNHCR estimates, there are some 10,000 Rohingyas living in Malaysia, many of whom arrived during the 1990s. Turk expressed concern, however, over a planned government crackdown on illegal immigrants next year. Refugees from Myanmar, the Indonesian province of Aceh and other troubled parts of the world should not be arrested, he said.
"There is a fundamental distinction to be made between illegal migrants, economic migrants who can go back to their own countries without difficulty and people who cannot go back for valid reasons, because of war, human rights abuse," he said.
"I have been given assurances by the government that people of concern to the UNHCR will not be affected by the crackdown," he said.
More than 10,000 Acehnese have taken refuge in Malaysia after fleeing fighting between troops and separatist rebels, he said.
Malaysia has been criticised in the past for detaining and forcibly returning refugees from Myanmar and Aceh.