A shipwreck in the Aegean Sea, southern Greece, killed some 500 people last week, the majority of whom have not been found and probably never will be.
It is one of the worst tragedies in recent history in the Mediterranean, which has not been lacking since the start of the 21st century.e century. Tied with the 500 deaths off Malta in September 2014, we are not far from the absolute horror of the 800 killed off Libya in April 2015.
The Greek Coast Guard is accused of having pushed the boat out of their territorial waters. Athens blames the Italians and more generally the European Union and the controversial Frontex agency, which acts on the edge of rescuing (a little) and locking borders (a lot).
A murderous tragedy, one more, as the countries of Europe barricade themselves and devote considerable resources to intercepting irregular ships attempting the crossing. Crossings fueled by human trafficking that has its origins in Libya, sub-Saharan Africa, Syria and as far as Afghanistan.
This horror, other figures also tell it… Those, for example, of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees of the United Nations (UNHCR) on “forcibly displaced persons” in the world.
In its detailed and richly documented annual report, published on June 14 with a wealth of colorful tables that recount the horror, we find the figure of 108 and a half million people – or one in 70 human beings – driven from their homes by a combination of wars, natural disasters and other epidemics.
About two-thirds are internally displaced persons, such as the Ukrainians who fled the Russian bombardments and left for kyiv or Lviv, without having taken the path of exile proper. A third, some 35 million, are “refugees” in the official sense, that is to say, having reached foreign countries.
It’s the three and a half million Syrians in Turkey, or the near million in Lebanon, or the five and a half million Ukrainians — the largest and fastest war migration ever seen in Europe since World War II.
The list of countries with the most citizens abroad is not surprising: in order, we find Syria, with 6.5 million refugees, Ukraine, with 5.7 million, and then — we sometimes forget — Afghanistan, with the same number as Ukraine. From these three countries come half of all the refugees in the world. Venezuela, South Sudan and Burma follow.
In most cases, we find authoritarian or dictatorial countries whose citizens flee the regime itself. To these strictly political causes is often added economic misery. A major exception: Ukraine, neither a dictatorship nor a country of poverty, where all departures in 2022 have a single cause: the Russian invasion.
If we reverse the look, on the side of the countries that welcome the most, we find States which, despite their more or less forced generosity, do not appear in the usual list of “nice people”. At the top: Turkey and Iran, with both 3.5 million refugees (in Iran, they come mainly from Afghanistan). Then, in order, Colombia, Germany and Pakistan.
Detail to note: formal claimants of refugee status represent only a small fraction of “refugees” according to the UNHCR definition… Something like 15% of the total, or between four and five million people, have filed formal claims and are awaiting decisions from various states on their status.
This figure of 108.5 million, and that of 35 million refugees abroad, represents a “snapshot” taken at the end of 2022. These are cumulative figures. It lists people displaced by crises that have sometimes “spillover” (such as Afghanistan or Syria, where the fighting has practically ceased), or even old stories that have “rotted” over the decades, such as the millions Palestinians…
But there are also other crises which are dramatically current, deadly to this day… such as Ukraine or even, more recently, Sudan.
To measure the evolution of this drama over time, there is no need to go back far: just from the end of 2021 to the end of 2022, we have gone from 89 million unhappy people… to almost 110 million today. Eight years ago, it was half!
A reality that is therefore always changing, with certain local crises that can be resolved. The figure for Ukraine – even very high – has moved downwards in the second half of 2022, falling from eight million in the spring to five and a half in the fall.
All in all, a tragedy in constant evolution which urgently challenges the generosity of neighbors and brothers in humanity… but also demands solutions at the root, to reduce these inhuman migrations.