World marks refugee day as 37 mln refugees in spotlight

NAIROBI, June 20 (Xinhua) -- As the world marks the refugee day on Friday, the UN refugee agency says over 37 million people were living as refugees from conflicts or persecution at the end of 2007, marking the second straight year of increases after a five-year decline.

"We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future," visiting UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.

"They range from multiple new conflict-related emergencies in world hotspots to bad governance, climate-induced environmental degradation that increases the competition for scarce resources, and extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places," the high commissioner said.

The number of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) being supported by the UN refugee agency rose by 2.5 million last year, spurred largely by instability in Iraq and other hotspot regions.

Colombia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have the highest number of people displaced within their own country, it said.

"Much of the increase in refugees in 2007 was a result of the volatile situation in Iraq," said the UNHCR in its annual survey of "Global Trends," released ahead of the World Refugee Day.

"The top refugee-hosting countries in 2007 included Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Germany and Jordan," the agency noted.

Top destination countries for those seeking permanent asylum from their home countries were the United States, South Africa, Sweden, France, Britain, Canada and Greece.

When it began work in 1951, the UNHCR's mandate was limited to finding solutions for the world's refugees. In recent decades, however, it has also been tasked to work with other UN agencies to help IDPs and other groups "of concern," including people with no defined nationality -- known as stateless people -- as well as asylum seekers, returned refugees and IDPs who have returned home.

Despite the increases, not all of the report's findings were negative. Some 731,000 refugees and over two million IDPs were able to return home last year.

Guterres said that providing protection for refugees today is vastly more challenging than when his office began work in 1951 trying to find solutions for Europeans uprooted in the aftermath of World War II.

"Old barriers to human mobility have fallen and new patterns of movement have emerged, including forms of forced displacement that were not envisaged by the 1951 UN Refugee Convention," Guterres said from Kenya, where he saw first-hand thousands of Somali refugees uprooted from their conflict-torn country, and Kenyans in the Rift Valley who were displaced in recent post-election violence.

Global refugee and forced displacement statistics for 2007, released by the UN refugee agency on Tuesday, showed Somalis were the fifth largest group of refugees and sixth largest group of internally displaced people under UNHCR's care worldwide, and the second largest group claiming asylum after Iraqis.

The new statistics showed globally there were 11.4 million refugees outside their countries and 26 million others displaced internally by conflict or persecution at the end of 2007, contributing to an unprecedented number of people uprooted under the care of the UN refugee agency.

"Conflict today may be motivated by politics, but looking deeper it can also be about poverty, bad governance, climate change leading to competition for scarce resources," said Guterres.

"Recent food and fuel shortages have had an immediate and dramatic effect on the poor and the dispossessed, including refugees and the internally displaced. Extreme price increases have generated instability and conflict in many places, with the very real potential of triggering more displacement," he warned.

Noting that the World Refugee Day is being celebrated on Friday, the high commissioner pledged greater supports from the agency to alleviate the situation faced by Somalis.

He also visited internally displaced Kenyans in the town of Naivasha, where they have been living after deadly post-election violence broke out at the start of the year.

Although more than 195,000 Kenyans have returned home since theviolence subsided, about 43,000 remain in camps around the country, including the two in Naivasha.

Guterres told IDPs at the Naivasha camps that his visit was "an expression of solidarity with the government and the people of Kenya."