As of today, the number of forced displaced persons, including cases due to the armed conflicts and prosecutions, exceeded 80 million worldwide, as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported.
“UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, estimates that global forced displacement surpassed 80 million at mid-year,” the message said.
At the beginning of 2020, about 79.5 forced displaced persons were spotted in the world; they left their homes as a result of the prosecutions, conflicts, and violations of human rights. 45.7 million of them are internally displaced persons; 29.6 million are refugees and 4.2 million are people are asylum seekers.
The UN states that the coronavirus pandemic created extra difficulties for people who are forced to seek asylum in other countries as due to the pandemic, in April, 168 countries completely or partially closed their borders. During the first six months of 2020, 22% fewer refugees returned home than in 2019 and the number of applications for the provision of asylum decreased by one-third.
According to UNHCR, as of mid-2020, there are 4.2 million people without citizenship in the world.
According to UNHCR, over 36,000 people live in Ukraine without citizenship. One-third of them are children. The majority of people who risked to be left without citizenship are children born in the uncontrolled territories of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions, homeless people, old people who obtain Soviet passports, and convicted persons. Thus, from February 2016 until September 2020, 47,597 children were born in uncontrolled territories.
As we reported, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine urged the authorities to de-link the payment of pensions from the registration of the status of the displaced residents.
