Global number of refugees dropped 14 per cent in 2002 - UN agency

As the international community marked World Refugee Day today, the United Nations refugee agency reported a 14 per cent drop in global numbers of asylum seekers and announced landmarks in two major target areas - the return of well over 2 million people to Afghanistan and the launching of a large-scale repatriation project for Angola.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that at the beginning of 2003, there were an estimated 10.3 million refugees worldwide, a decrease of 1.7 million compared to a year earlier. But the total population of concern to UNHCR, including refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) as well as those who returned during the year, increased slightly from 19.8 million in early 2002 to some 20. 5 million in early 2003, it added.

UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a press briefing in Geneva the main reason for the refugee decline was the repatriation of Afghans from Pakistan and Iran, and he said that this weekend the number was poised to pass a quarter million for 2003, bringing the total since the fall of the Taliban regime to well over 2 million. But, he added, 4 million Afghans still remain in Pakistan and Iran.

The agency also launched today a major repatriation of some 220,000 Angolans living mainly in camps in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The return, to take place in several phases over the next two years and eventually bring home a third of those driven from their country by nearly three decades of civil war, began with two convoys of 500 people from three camps in the DRC. Since May 2002, some 100,000 Angolans have already returned home on their own.

Figures released by UNHCR also showed that 76,000 refugees from Sierra Leone, 53,000 from Burundi, 37,000 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 32,000 Somalis and 32,000 from Timor-Leste returned home in 2002.

But nearly 300,000 refugees became newly displaced, including 105,000 from Liberia, 39,000 from DRC, 29,000 from Burundi, 24,000 from Somalia, 22,000 from Cote d'Ivoire and 20,000 from Central African Republic.

Despite the mass return of Afghan refugees, Asia continues to host the largest refugee population (4.2 million), although its share in the global number fell from 48 per cent to 40 per cent. Africa hosts the second largest (3.3 million), followed by Europe (2.2. million), North America (610,000), Oceania (65,000) and Latin America and the Caribbean (41,000).