The number of people uprooted from their homes fell to 42 million in 2008 but is set to surge this year because of conflicts in Pakistan, Somalia and Sri Lanka, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday. The total of internally displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers around the world dropped by 700,000 last year, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugee's annual "Global Trends" report.
But fresh displacement, which was not included in the report, including some two million in north-western Pakistan, had "more than offset that decline", the UNHCR said. "In 2009, we have already seen substantial new displacements, namely in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia," High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said.
"While some displacements may be short-lived, others can take years and even decades to resolve." Some 80 percent of the people uprooted in the world are in developing nations, the UNHCR said, noting that wealthy nations were growing increasingly reluctant to take in asylum seekers as the economic crisis bites.
"It also shows that some of the more vocal criticism that you hear in some industrialised countries from populist politicians and some media about being 'flooded' with refugees is perhaps a bit overdone," said UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond. The global total in the report includes 16 million refugees and asylum seekers - people who fled across borders - and 26 million internally displaced people.
About 5.7 million of them are "living in limbo" according to the UNHCR, stuck in near permanent displacement after being in exile for at least five years. Many of those were in Colombia - for years home to the world's largest internally displaced population of some three million - Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.
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