North-South Conference: Building Partnerships for Sustainable Development

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Participant Resources | Scenario: North-South Conference

Refugees

It is very hard to estimate the exact number of refugees worldwide, but recent estimates made by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN agency whose responsibility it is to "lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide," put the total number at nearly 20 million, some 9 million of whom are in Africa and Europe. The UN defines refugees as "someone with a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of his or her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, who is outside of his or her country of nationality and unable or unwilling to return." In addition to refugees, there are about the same number of internally displaced persons, people who are uprooted within their own country.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right of victims of persecution to seek refuge (asylum) in other countries. Yet, governments often see refugees as a burden or a threat, and refuse to respect this key principle of the Declaration.

Today, refugee problems are discussed at a global level. Media coverage and the communications infrastructure has made it possible to monitor local conflicts, natural disasters, or other events provoking a wave of refugees. As a result, public awareness has improved, yet all too often, conditions and situations that could be dealt with preventively are allowed to deteriorate until they become disasters, and problems (e.g. famine) that develop slowly rather than as a result of a sudden, catastrophic event, fail to receive sufficient attention until they, too, have reached catastrophic proportions.