World Refugee Day

War and conflicts forced over 80 million people to flee their homes. World Refugee Day is an international day designated by the United Nations to honour refugees around the globe. It falls each year on June 20 and celebrates the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home country to escape conflict or persecution. World Refugee Day is an occasion to build empathy and understanding for their plight and to recognize their resilience in rebuilding their lives.

World Refugee Day shines a light on the rights, needs and dreams of refugees, helping to mobilize political will and resources so refugees can not only survive but also thrive. While it is important to protect and improve the lives of refugees every single day, international days like World Refugee Day help to focus global attention on the plight of those fleeing conflict or persecution.

With the Enter to Transform project we would like to support refugees to become ready for business creation. The project contributes to the self-esteem of refugees and their social inclusion through entrepreneurship. It contributes to remove existing entrance barriers and creates tailored support. Projects like Enter to Transform are needed because the numbers of refugees are rising and their situation is often very precarious. 

Every year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) release the global trends report with new facts and numbers about refugees worldwide. We would like to present a few to you:

  • There are 6 million refugees worldwide and 48 million internally displaced people.

 

  • The countries with the largest numbers of internally displaced people are: Colombia (8 million), Syria (6.6 million), DR Congo (5 million), Yemen (3,6 million) and Somalia (2,6 million).

 

  • Developing countries hosted 86% of the world’s refugees. The Least Developed Countries provided asylum to 27% of the total.

 

  • Turkey hosted nearly 3.7 million refugees, the largest population worldwide. Colombia was second with more than 1.7 million, Pakistan third with 1.5 million, Uganda fourth with 1.4 million and Germany fifth with 1.2 million.

 

  • 73% of refugees are hosted in neighbouring countries.

 

  • 68% of refugees originated from 5 countries: 6.7 million from Syria, 4 million from Venezuela, 2.6 million from Afghanistan, 2.2 million from South Sudan and 1.1 million from Myanmar.

 

  • 34,400 refugees were resettled in 2020, one-third of the previous year (107,800).

 

  • Relative to their national populations, the island of Aruba hosted the largest number of Venezuelans displaced abroad (1 in 6) while Lebanon hosted the largest number of refugees (1 in 8), followed by Curaçao (1 in 10), Jordan (1 in 15) and Turkey (1 in 23).

 

  • 80% of all refugees worldwide live in countries which suffer from malnutrition.

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