[refugee-rights] Global number of refugees dropped 14 percent in 2002

GLOBAL NUMBER OF REFUGEES DROPPED 14 PER CENT IN 2002 - UN AGENCY
New York, Jun 20 2003  1:00PM

As the international community marked World Refugee Day today, the United 
Nations refugee agency reported a 14 per cent drop in global numbers of 
asylum seekers and announced landmarks in two major target areas - the 
return of well over 2 million people to Afghanistan and the launching of a 
large-scale repatriation project for Angola.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that at the beginning of 
2003, there were an estimated 10.3 million refugees worldwide, a decrease 
of 1.7 million compared to a year earlier. But the total population of 
concern to UNHCR, including refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced 
persons (IDPs) as well as those who returned during the year, increased 
slightly from 19.8 million in early 2002 to some 20. 5 million in early 
2003, it added.

UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a press briefing in Geneva the main 
reason for the refugee decline was the repatriation of Afghans from 
Pakistan and Iran, and he said that this weekend the number was poised to 
pass a quarter million for 2003, bringing the total since the fall of the 
Taliban regime to well over 2 million. But, he added, 4 million Afghans 
still remain in Pakistan and Iran.

The agency also launched today a major repatriation of some 220,000 
Angolans living mainly in camps in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of 
the Congo (DRC). The return, to take place in several phases over the next 
two years and eventually bring home a third of those driven from their 
country by nearly three decades of civil war, began with two convoys of 500 
people from three camps in the DRC. Since May 2002, some 100,000 Angolans 
have already returned home on their own.

Figures released by UNHCR also showed that 76,000 refugees from Sierra 
Leone, 53,000 from Burundi, 37,000 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 32,000 
Somalis and 32,000 from Timor-Leste returned home in 2002.

But nearly 300,000 refugees became newly displaced, including 105,000 from 
Liberia, 39,000 from DRC, 29,000 from Burundi, 24,000 from Somalia, 22,000 
from Cote d'Ivoire and 20,000 from Central African Republic.

Despite the mass return of Afghan refugees, Asia continues to host the 
largest refugee population (4.2 million), although its share in the global 
number fell from 48 per cent to 40 per cent. Africa hosts the second 
largest (3.3 million), followed by Europe (2.2. million), North America 
(610,000), Oceania (65,000) and Latin America and the Caribbean (41,000).

UN News Service


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