Press Releases 2010

With the Sudan referendum just weeks away, thousands of southerners living in the North are heading back to southern Sudan. Their movement by road, rail, barge and plane is both organized by the South Sudan government and spontaneous.

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Over the past days UNHCR has been beefing up its contingency arrangements for Cote d’Ivoire in light of the continued instability there. Ahead of the weekend we airlifted additional supplies to Liberia and Guinea from our emergency stockpile in Copenhagen. We currently stand ready to cope with the needs of up to 30,000 refugees.

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UNHCR is dismayed that on 15th December Sweden once again forcibly returned a group of some 20 Iraqis to Baghdad. Among this group – sent back on the eve of Ashura – were five Christians originally from Baghdad.

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The head of the UN refugee agency, António Guterres, marked today’s 60th anniversary of the organization he heads by appealing for strengthened global impetus in tackling the world’s new and fast-evolving displacement and statelessness problems.

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UNHCR is urging EU member states, and FRONTEX as the EU’s external border agency, to ensure that asylum in Europe is not being threatened in the drive for tighter policing of the continent’s external borders. Our concern is that in its efforts to stem illegal migration, Europe should not forget that among those seeking to enter the EU are people who need international protection and are at risk of their lives.

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UNHCR is closely following the post-electoral crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, which has already led some 2,000 Ivorians, mostly women and children, to seek safety in neighbouring Liberia and Guinea, according to local authorities in the two countries. To date, an estimated 1,700 people have crossed into Nimba county, north-eastern Liberia. Another 200 arrived exhausted in Guinea's Nzerekore region after having walked for two days.

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UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, warned on Wednesday of growing gaps in the global framework for protecting the world’s millions of forcibly displaced and stateless people, and appealed to the international community to urgently adapt and respond.

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This week UNHCR has wrapped up its emergency shelter programme in southern Kyrgyzstan, providing temporary homes for all of the more than 13,400 people whose houses were damaged or destroyed during June’s violence there.

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 As of today most of the 15,000 Myanmar refugees who fled into Thailand earlier this week, have returned across the border. Sites in northern Thailand’s Tak province have been empty since Wednesday and further south in Sanghklaburi all 3,000 refugees were gone as of this morning. 

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UNHCR mobilized quickly on Monday to come to the aid of more than 15,000 refugees who fled into northern Thailand after fighting broke out between ethnic Karen rebels and government troops in the Myawaddy area of eastern Myanmar the day after elections. At the request of Thai authorities, we are coordinating the efforts of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others to provide shelter, food and water to refugees in the town of Mae Sot.

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It was announced yesterday (Monday) by the European Commission that the Greek Government has requested the deployment of Rapid Border Intervention Teams from FRONTEX, the EU's Border Management Agency, to assist at the land border between Turkey and Greece.

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A poll of Iraqis who have returned to Baghdad from neighbouring countries found that physical insecurity, economic hardship and a lack of basic public services has led the majority to regret their decision to return to Iraq.

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UNHCR is very concerned at new displacement arising out of continuing attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army, whose latest ambush on Sunday in the northern Central African Republic town of Birao, is reported to have resulted in abductions of young girls, looting, and shops being set afire.

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A recent UNHCR survey of Iraqi refugees living in Syria has found that most are still reluctant to return home on a permanent basis.

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UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres warned today that a rise in drawn-out conflict was creating new semi-permanent global refugee situations. He said this requires broader and better protection for the world’s 43 million forcibly displaced people.

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) annual Nansen Refugee Award ceremony will be held at 19:30 on Monday 4 October at the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices, Geneva. This year’s winner is British photo-journalist Alixandra Fazzina.

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UNHCR is today calling on Greece to urgently accelerate implementation of its planned asylum reform. This is in light of the continued absence in Greece of a functioning asylum system, an issue with important implications for the wider EU.

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This week we have received reports of a killing and drownings in the Gulf of Aden, indicating that the autumn mixed-migration sailing season has resumed.

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UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie has been in Pakistan today, highlighting the suffering of millions of flood victims and the need for continuing aid for the displaced.

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UNHCR is alarmed by the further deterioration we are seeing in the situation in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Our partners report that fighting over the past two weeks between the transitional government and al-Shabaab has cost more than 230 civilian lives with at least 400 people wounded and 23,000 displaced.

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Despite flood waters receding in some parts of Pakistan and more people returning home, the overall humanitarian situation is still very grave.

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UNHCR is very concerned by on-going forced returns of Iraqi citizens from Western European countries. On September 1st, a chartered flight with 61 people on board, mainly Iraqis who had been residing in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom, landed at Baghdad airport. UNHCR has so far not been able to confirm reports that three Iranians were among those on board.

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The number of people returning voluntarily to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran so far this year has exceeded 100,000, almost twice as many as last year. Some 95,000 of these are from Pakistan.

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UNHCR is increasingly concerned about the plight of flood-affected Afghan refugees in Pakistan, some of whom are now under pressure to repatriate by speculators around Peshawar seeking to develop land that until now has been occupied by refugee settlements.

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To mark World Humanitarian Day 2010, on August 19th, UNHCR is making available to interested media a rare interview with one of its staff members, Vincent Cochetel, who was kidnapped in 1998 in the Northern Caucasus and held hostage for almost a year.

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With over 160,000 people having so far received UNHCR emergency shelter and relief assistance across flood-affected areas of Pakistan, the agency appealed on Wednesday for $41 million to help meet the urgent needs of a further 560,000 people, amounting to 80,000 families.

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Pakistan’s flooding is testing the limits of the country’s emergency response capacity, as well as that of UNHCR and other UN and international agencies to respond.

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Monsoon rain continues to sweep across parts of Pakistan. According to UNHCR implementing partners on the ground, it has been raining today in northern areas of the Swat Valley in flood-affected Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

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UNHCR, as part of a coordinated UN response, is stepping up its assistance to provide shelter to the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the worst floods and landslides northwest Pakistan has seen in decades.

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UNHCR is calling on local and central authorities in Kyrgyzstan to improve the situation and the return conditions for some 75,000 remaining internally displaced people (IDPs) who were uprooted by the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan during June.

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today announced the winner of its annual Nansen Refugee Award, British photo-journalist Alixandra Fazzina. Ms. Fazzina was chosen for her tireless dedication to uncovering and portraying the overlooked human consequences of war.

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UNHCR has called for a significant increase in resettlement opportunities, estimating that over the next three to five years more than 805,000 refugees will need resettling in third countries.

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The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has heard from the Police Chief in Orestiada in northern Greece that sixteen people drowned while trying to cross the Evros River on 29 June. Eleven of the bodies were recovered on the Greek side of the river, while a further five were found on the Turkish side. The majority are believed to be Somalis, including three women.

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UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres today appealed to the international community not to forget the tens of thousands of people faced with having to rebuild lives and overcome trauma following the violence in mid-June in and around Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan.

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The UNHCR Regional Office for the Baltic and Nordic countries today releases a new study that is based on in-depth interviews with unaccompanied Afghan refugee minors in Sweden.

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UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, announced today a major landmark in resettlement of Iraqi refugees, with 100,000 people having been referred for resettlement from the Middle East to third countries since 2007. Guterres made the announcement during his visit to Syria, which according to government estimates, hosts over 1 million refugees, the majority from Iraq.

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Some 300,000 people are now estimated to be internally displaced in Kyrgyzstan, according to information from the Kyrgyz Interim Government and non-governmental organizations on the ground.

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A UNHCR emergency airlift to Uzbekistan carrying humanitarian aid for tens of thousands of people fleeing the violence southern Kyrgyzstan began early Wednesday morning (16 June). The first two UNHCR flights, loaded with humanitarian aid from agency's central stockpiles in Dubai, landed at Andijan airport at 1110 and 1400 today local time.

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The first of six planned Ilyushin-76 cargo planes, each carrying 40 tonnes of UNHCR relief supplies for refugees fleeing violence in southern Kyrgystan, is scheduled to take off from Dubai tomorrow morning (Wednesday, 16 June) at 0100 hrs GMT and is expected to land at Andijan airport in Uzbekistan at 0500 hrs GMT.

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Some 43.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2009, the highest number of people uprooted by conflict and persecution since the mid-1990s, according to UNHCR's annual 2009 Global Trends report, released today. At the same time, the number of refugees voluntarily returning to their home countries has fallen to its lowest level in twenty years.

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UNHCR is preparing to deploy emergency team and aid to Uzbekistan where thousands of refugees have crossed fleeing violent clashes in Osh and other cities in south Kyrgyzstan.

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Growing numbers of Afghan children are making a difficult and dangerous overland journey to Europe, travelling without their parents and exposed to dangers and human rights abuses, a new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report has found. The report presents recommendations on how governments, including the government of Afghanistan, should respond to this complex issue.

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UNHCR understands that four governments - the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK - are arranging an enforced removal of Iraqi citizens to Baghdad, Iraq later this week. We have not received confirmed information of the number and profile of those individuals and whether some have requested protection.

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UNHCR is calling for US$18 million to meet an anticipated shortfall this year in its requested funding for Afghan refugees in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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More than 17,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the Somali capital Mogadishu in May. Over 14,300 fled in the past two weeks alone, following renewed, heavy fighting between the Transitional Federal Government troops, supported by the African Union Peace Keeping Force (AMISOM), and armed opposition groups.

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On May 11th, UNHCR issued new eligibility guidelines on the protection needs of Somali asylum seekers. On May 12th, we notified donors of our concerns over the deteriorating situation in Somalia.

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Prompted by a rapidly deteriorating situation and growing displacement in Somalia UNHCR is seeking additional funds to ease the plight of Somali refugees in neighbouring Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia and Djibouti and those forcibly displaced inside their country.

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We welcome last week’s resumption of Government-led return movements in northern Sri Lanka, following a three week temporary pause due to parliamentary elections and Tamil New Year. Following this, some 7,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) have returned to the districts of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu.

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I am humbled by today’s decision of the UN General Assembly to renew my mandate as High Commissioner for a further five years. It is a privilege and an honour to go on dedicating my life to supporting one of the world’s most vulnerable groups.

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UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie today expressed her concern for the lives and the well-being of thousands of displaced people who are trapped in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

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UNHCR is shocked by the further loss of civilian lives we’ve seen from fighting in Mogadishu earlier this week. More than 30 people are reported killed, many of them civilians including children. From local sources we understand that medical facilities are having difficulties coping with the many wounded. Residents have described this week’s shelling as among the worst in months.

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The number of people crossing the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea in the mixed migration flow from the Horn of Africa has nearly halved during the first quarter of the year in comparison with the same period in 2009. Since the beginning of the year, some 9,400 people reached the shores of Yemen in contrast to nearly 17,000 between January and March 2009.

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It is with great sadness that I learned yesterday of the bomb attacks on subway stations in Moscow and the many deaths and injuries that have resulted.

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In-depth research by the UN Refugee Agency in 12 EU Member States has found numerous differences in the way asylum applications are assessed. UNHCR calls for practical measures and amendments to EU legislation to ensure fair and effective asylum procedures across the Union. The UNHCR study entitled “Improving Asylum Procedures” was presented today in Brussels.

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The overall number of asylum seekers in industrialized nations was stable in 2009, according to the UNHCR provisional statistical report that measures asylum levels and trends in industrialized nations.

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UNHCR is extremely worried about the worsening situation for the civilian population in Somalia which is, once again, exposed to relentless and indiscriminate fighting in Mogadishu and elsewhere in the country. We estimate that since the beginning of the year more than 100,000 Somali civilians have been forced to flee their homes across the country.

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NRK Søndagsrevyen’s reportage yesterday on the situation of internally displaced Roma in the lead polluted Cesmin Lug and Osterode camps in Kosovo is very disturbing.

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Angelina Jolie, who said she was in Haiti to "listen and to learn," visited medical centres, the UN mission and met with vulnerable children. On her arrival in the Haitian capital, Jolie was briefed by the United Nations Acting Special Representative of the Secretary-General Edmond Mulet on the scale of the humanitarian operation to date and the challenges that remain.

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UNHCR welcomes the approval by the Council of Ministers of Spain on 29 January of the establishment of an annual refugee resettlement programme, in accordance with the recently amended asylum law.

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The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is deepening and we now estimate that 250,000 civilians have been displaced since the countrys internal conflict flared in 2004. This represents a more than doubling of the number displaced as of August 2009 when the latest round of fighting erupted.

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UNHCR reiterates its strong commitment to back up and support the broader humanitarian effort to address the massive and urgent needs in Haiti, which is under the leadership of the Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes.

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The number of Somali casualties and displaced civilians continues to grow as fighting in central areas of Somalia rages on. Since the beginning of the year, fighting and general insecurity have displaced an estimated 63,000 people in Somalia.

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The widening strife in Somalia is having a devastating effect on the civilian population and sparking increasing displacement.

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There is no lull in the fierce fighting between the government troops and Al Houti forces in Saada province in northern Yemen as the conflict enters the sixth month. Thousands of Yemeni civilians continue to flee to neighbouring provinces, desperately seeking safety, shelter and assistance.

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