IN an interview given just before his tenure ended on Dec. 31, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi lamented that a deeply divided world is fueling conflicts and crises that have worsened the problem of displaced populations.
The “fragmentation of geopolitics,” Grandi said, is making it more difficult for the millions of people affected by such catastrophes to recover.
The UNHCR defines a refugee as someone who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”
The UN refugee agency has reported that at the end of June 2024, 122.6 million people across the world were forced out of their homes “due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order.”
Six countries — Sudan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Haiti and Mozambique — accounted for 90 percent of the total number of refugees.
Being driven out of their homes is not the only problem refugees face.
The UNHCR said there were “diminishing prospects for refugees when it comes to hopes of any quick end to their plight.”
In the 1990s, an average of 1.5 million refugees were able to return home each year. But the agency said that “over the past decade, that number has fallen to around 385,000, meaning that growth in displacement is today far outstripping solutions.”
When the UNHCR was established by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 14, 1950, it was given a three-year mandate to complete its work and then disband.
With the adoption of the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees the following year, which outlined the legal foundation of helping refugees and the basic statute guiding the UNHCR’s work, the agency was given an unlimited term.
Drawn-out wars in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Vietnam swelled the number of refugees in the 1960s and 1970s. In the next two decades, conflicts in Iraq, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia further bloated the refugee population.
In 2019, the UNHCR reported that the number of people in the world fleeing violence was the highest it had been since the Second World War: 70.8 million, including 25.9 million refugees.
Today, of the 123.2 million people displaced around the world, 31 million are refugees, 20 percent higher than the figure just six years ago, said Concern Worldwide, an international humanitarian organization.
“While many have returned home and these numbers can fluctuate heavily throughout the year, at one point in 2023, we exceeded 40 million refugees around the world,” Concern Worldwide said.
Wars alone are not the only reason millions are uprooted from their homes. Concern Worldwide says violation of human rights or persecution, hunger and famine, and climate change are also driving the global refugee crisis.
The constantly rising number of refugees is not the only thing that worries Grandi. He noted “a growing hostility, a rhetoric by the populist politicians targeting and scapegoating people on the move.”
The agency itself faces a serious crisis.
The United States has slashed humanitarian assistance funding to $2 billion, a precipitous drop from the $17 billion or so it has been providing the UN for years.
US President Donald Trump ordered the drastic cuts as he called on UN agencies to “adapt, shrink or die” if they do not establish a more consolidated leadership authority.
Other Western countries have also announced they were slashing humanitarian funding.
The fund reductions have forced the UNHCR to reduce aid and close down services, at a time when the refugee population continues to grow.
“What worries me most is this ‘my country first’ rhetoric,” Grandi said, stressing: “It’s not just Washington — it’s global.”
The very concept of international cooperation appeared to be evaporating, he added.
Unless the fragmentation of geopolitics Grandi speaks of is addressed, that cooperation may never materialize.