Refugee Flow to Industrialized Nations Is Poised for a 20-Year High
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Version 0 of 1. GENEVA — Conflict and instability in the Middle East and parts of Africa look set to push the number of people seeking asylum in industrialized countries to the highest level in 20 years in 2014, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday, warning that the flow of refugees was increasing the strain on already overstretched humanitarian aid budgets. More than 330,700 people applied for asylum in a group of 44 countries in Europe, North America and parts of the Asia-Pacific region in the first half of the year, the refugee agency reported, almost a quarter more than in the last half of 2013. From the experience of past years, which saw more people seeking asylum in the second half of the year, it predicts that the number of people seeking refuge in these countries will reach more than 700,000 by the end of the year, the highest level since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The fast-rising number of asylum seekers adds to the alarm expressed by international aid agencies struggling to cope with numbers of people displaced by conflict that have reached the highest level since the end of World War II and soaring numbers of migrants risking their lives to reach the richer countries of Europe and North America. “The international community needs to prepare their populations for the reality that in the absence of solutions to conflict, more and more people are going to need refuge and care in the coming months and years,” António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, warned in a statement. He added: “Unfortunately, it is not clear that the resources and the access to asylum will be available to help them.” The biggest group of asylum seekers in recent years came from Afghanistan, refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said, but in 2014 the largest number are Syrians fleeing more than three years of civil war. Some 48,400 Syrians sought asylum in the first half of the year, a tiny number compared with the more than three million Syrian refugees sheltering in neighboring countries but still more than double the number applying in the same period of last year. The other main sources of asylum seekers were Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea, together producing close to 60,000 applicants, the refugee agency reported. More than two-thirds of asylum seekers in the first half of the year sought entry to six countries, including four Western European countries, Turkey and the United States. Some 52,800 asylum seekers applied to get into the United States, more than one-third of them from Mexico and Central America escaping drug cartel and organized crime violence, although China, as in previous years, was the main country of origin. Germany, Sweden and France were among the most sought-after destinations, particularly by Syrians, while Italy, the destination of thousands of migrants smuggled across the Mediterranean from North Africa, saw rising asylum claims from West African countries. |