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AS WAR CONTINUES to rage across large parts of the Middle East and Africa, an estimated 5.5 million people had to flee their homes in the first six months of last year alone.
A new report from the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, found that 1.4 million of these people fled across international borders becoming refugees, while the rest were displaced within their own countries.
The number of people being helped by the agency stood at 46.3 million as of mid-2014. That is 3.4 mullion more than the end of 2013 and a new record high.
For the first time, Syrians have become the largest refugee population under UNHCR’s mandate, overtaking Afghans who held that position for more than three decades.
Pakistan, which hosts 1.6 million Afghan refugees, remains the biggest host country in absolute terms. Other countries with large refugee populations include Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Jordan and Ethiopia.
Ireland currently hosts just over 6,000 people who have received refugee status. A further 5,149 asylum seekers – most living in direct provision accommodation – are awaiting decisions on their applications.
The UNHCR report shows the main destination for new refugees in the first half of last year was Germany, followed by the USA, France and Sweden.
“In 2014 we have seen the number of people under our care grow to unprecedented levels. As long as the international community continues to fail to find political solutions to existing conflicts and to prevent new ones from starting, we will continue to have to deal with the dramatic humanitarian consequences,” commented UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.
“The economic, social and human cost of caring for refugees and the internally displaced is being borne mostly by poor communities, those who are least able to afford it. Enhanced international solidarity is a must if we want to avoid the risk of more and more vulnerable people being left without proper support.”
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Bankrupt Ireland cannot afford to accommodate refugees either.
Ireland has too many immigrants who use refugee status as an advantage to minipulate….. Especially African and Romanian Roma, not racist just stating facts that are inconvenient to state
johnny boy, not to be pedantic, but the Roma are not refugees. They are EU citizens and have a right to free movement. This does not or should not equate to a right to welfare as a recent ECJ judgement has affirmed.
John,
They are entitled to go in a housing list and get medical treatment and apply for childrens allowance in the same way Irish people can.
And what about all the other allowances … ?
And Roma aren’t Romanian.
Plenty of space in Brazil and Russia so
You didn’t read the story or look at the graph did you, or you would have realised how dumb your comment is. The third world is doing the heavy lifting in receiving refugees while the first world watches and does very little other than receive a token amount.
Not so…if you look at who’s caring for the most refugees by numbers only you’ll see who’s shouldering most of the burden, it’s the the third world. In the first world we’ve allowed ourselves to be dog whistled into believing we’re doing the heavy lifting.
Why can’t we send refugees from war torn countries to the country who started the war, ie the USA. Hopefully they won’t be put into Guantanamo bay.
agree Bertie…..their dot is pretty small consideing the size of their country!
You don’t even specify which war you’re talking about. Presumably because every war is America’s fault?
Are USA and Australia too strict or too far away? I thought they’d have a larger number than that
No it just appears that way because their politicians make a lot of noise dog-whistling to scare the herd into thinking there’s a problem
too right boganity – the aussie prime minister (and his predecessors) have ‘manufactured’ an issue of the asylum seekers by feeding on paranoia and racism. The facts show that far more asylum seekers arrive by plane yet the Australian government made boat arrivals an election issue, and spent vast amounts to ‘stop the boats’
Australia is a rich vast country and should be ashamed of its poor response to people seeking asylum.
Australia and USA have taken the right approach – they are only interested in those immigrants who can contribute to their economy and not draw from it. They undoubtedly have a large number of Australians who need support and that is who they focus on.
They don’t pander to the liberal view so beloved of the EU and which many in Ireland also subscribe to.
An example of how ridiculous this ‘asylum’ situation has become is reported by the BBC this week;
Syrians are automatically granted residency and social welfare FOR LIFE in Sweden and there are now private planes now landing in airports in Sweden with Syrian ‘refugees’ on board.
Ireland contributes tens of millions of Euro to help many 3rd world and war-torn countries every year and we need feel no guilt to accept any refugees.
Larry you seemed to have confused immigrants and refugees. Ireland is a party to both the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol related to Refugees. Both of these pre-date our membership of the EU. Ireland as a country therefore agreed that refugees are considered innocent if they enter a country of refuge in good faith and cannot be forcibly returned if their life or freedom would be endangered by doing so. Contributing aid does not relieve us of these duties.
The UK could do more, considering so many of the conflicts are due to the arbitrary lines it drew on maps.
KallEll,
Thank you but I am very clear on the similarities an the differences between AS, refugees and immigrants.
Whilst we still have an obligation under a convention written in the aftermath of the tragedy that was WW2 and the genuine refugees that it created, this should not translate to a eternal moral obligation.
Our moral obligation to those from other countries less fortunate than ourselves is addressed by our international contributions both at Governmental level and through charity.
And I might remind you that under the original Geneva Convention on refugees (confirmed by the further Protocols) refugees are obliged to return to their country when the conflict has passed. Can you recall when that last happened ?
It hasn’t transformed into a moral obligation (unless you are an instigator of the war that made them refugees perhaps) but it is a legal obligation. What makes a Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan any less genuine of a refugee than someone fleeing Poland in the 1940s? That seems to be what you are implying. And again aid does nothing to relieve our obligation. It’s like Ireland signing up to reduce carbon emissions and then saying actually we’ve planted some trees in the Amazon so we are no longer obliged.
Well international law is also impacted by customary law so if countries choose not to return refugees then that is their interpretation (some view temporary protection as en route to permanent residency). They aren’t required to do so by EU law. In fact the EU helped 900,000 refugees return to Bosnia at the start of the century.
Unfortunately as a progressive I’m ashamed my side of politics are no better as they’re on a “me too” ticket. Politics has been now been reduced to an algorithm focused on the disengaged, uninformed and ignorant, despite 12 years of schooling, 5% or so of voters in the middle who swing vote for the shallowest of reasons. Politicians from both sides have learned that dog whistling is a very effective tool to sway their vote. It’s also a very clever strategy that allows the same politicians to deny it when called out on their racism but leaves the message clear and understood with their target audience. The other 95% of voters who make informed decisions about their voting choices are irrelevant in the political process. In short Bogans decide who wins government, though their ignorance they have stumbled onto a political power that they are totally unaware of, so the rest of us live in an increasing Bogan world. Viva La Bogan ! Viva La Ignorance !
Sweden a country of 9 million
..the true figure here for 2014 is 80,000-90,000 with 105,000 predicted for 2015.
We in Ireland should see this as an opportunity to give many more people a fresh start. This would obviously help the individuals and assuming we let then work here Ireland would receive a political and economic boost.
Anthony, let them work in Ireland? We have our own very large pool of unemployed. What marketable skills would they have? Do they speak English? Allowing a large cohort of refugees into our country would make very considerable financial demands as they would need financial and social support for a long period. Most of them would have few skills that we need or that were not already available in our population or the EU. More importantly allowing a large number of refugees without marketable skills to access our labour market would strongly discriminate against our own large pool of relatively unskilled labour. Your view is well intentioned but not practicable. Far better to assist them overseas or assist the countries that are receiving them.
Sure take a couple into your houde
*house
Houde is a village in the Doufelgou Prefecture in the Kara Region of north-eastern Togo, apparently…
Jesus Anthony, sure dont we have thousands of our own that we need to support – Irish people who will have plenty of kids, who for generations haven’t worked an honest days work, who’ll rob your house or car as a way of thanking you for supporting them from the craddle to the grave …. surely these people are more deserving than some refugee fleeing persecution, sure arent they Irish after all.
A large number of the Middle Eastern refugees are third level educated and fluent in English. Any study which has looked at immigrants and their affect on the country the move into shows that they tend to be very well performing in the work place and they tend to be net contributors to the economy and support more jobs than they take up.
We have the same amount of refugees as the UK per capita and percentage of population and over 3 times more than the US. We can’t afford to take these insane numbers, the US, NATO and Russia provoked most of these conflicts and they should take the most. We should take 0 refugees as there are no direct flights from Asia and Africa into Ireland. We should only be taking the Malala Yousafzai types. Real asylum seekers fighting for equality.
Yeah, that sounds like a really reasonable metric for helping asylum seekers: limit it to the internationally renowned Nobel laureate types.
@Conor O’ Neill, yes, only the internationally renowned Nobel laureate types. Let the NATO countries and Russia take all others. On Paper we don’t even have to take the internationally renowned Nobel laureate types if they come from a country with no direct flights into Ireland, that’s the current EU law.
6k people with refugee status in a country of 4.7 million is hardly an “insane number”. Although, I do hope Aer Lingus doesn’t start direct flights to Damascus, Kinshasa and Mogadishu!!
Before we begin to debate this very controversial issue of migrants we must first focus on the origins of this problem. We have over 4 million displaced people in Iraq caused by an illegal invasion because they had the audacity to contemplate trading their oil in Euro’s instead of petro dollars. (For this reason Germany and France did not contribute to this war) Libya made the same mistake some years later. They wished to trade oil in a newly created currency called the gold dinar. Their country has as a result being completely destroyed, causing many people in this once very prosperous country to emigrate. We look at Afghanistan where according to UN statistics heroin production (Google) has increased 27 X since invasion and its vast mineral resources are being exploited. Country completely destroyed. Syria refused a Qatari gas pipeline to cross its territory to the Mediterranean . Result, civil war orchestrated by many countries. See http://www.globalresearch.ca/former-french-foreign-minister-the-war-against-syria-was-planned-two-years-before-the-arab-spring/5339112 thus causing millions of new refugees. Very interesting in this discussion are the many comments regarding aid. Do people realize the discrepancy involved here ? Please watch short film “Honest accounts ? The true story of Africa’s billion dollar losses : 192 billionout of Africa. 30 billion into Africa : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5hdcfFyahM
Or Hase anybody heard of the 5:50:500 ratio?
Each year NGOs have contributed at least $5 billion to the Developing World.
Each year Governments have contributed at least $50 billion to the Developing World.
Each year the Developing World loses an average of $500 billion as a result of the unjust international economic system.
(OECD & IMF based figures – from research by Bertrand Borg & Colm Regan)
“So in short for every $55 billion transferred to the Developing World by the Developed World, $500 billion is transferred in the opposite direction”
I would ask people to concentrate more on the reasons for the dilemma which these unfortunate people have been placed in rather than demonizing them.
Exactly Pat.
If there wasn’t a de facto policy of the last centuries, now getting worse, of exploiting 3rd world populations & exterminating the ones we can’t use, there would be the increasing life and death desparation for them to leave and emigrate to perceived wealthier countries.
They aren’t stupid. These migrants all know that there is considerable risk of losing their lives in the migration attempt and their easy exploitation as illegals if they even make it.
As George Monbiot explains to Russell Brand in this short video, we have a global system of Government & Corporate leadership populated by Psychopaths, without human empathy or conscience, going back centuries. The advent of ‘democracy’ and elections has hardly altered this fact at all.
It is the primary explanation for all the suffering of ordinary people in the world. And at the same time why it largely remains hidden… understandably, ordinary people possesed of normal empathy simply cannot comprehend that anyone can think & act like a Psychopath… so, absent any actual ‘knowledge’ – the last thing our education and media are designed to provide – the Psychopaths continue running the world unnoticed.
I think we should take Australias approach to it all. If we can’t even help ourselfs why help others. We are just saps when it comes to all this helping other countries. We have homeless people in Ireland but we would still send money to help other countries
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