Where Are the World’s Hidden Refugees?

In Latin America, political violence drives the internally displaced of Colombia out of rural areas and into towns, where they live unregistered on the margins of society.

The growth in the number of urban refugees coincides with two other developments: the overall erosion in the commitment of states to asylum for those fleeing persecution and conflict and large-scale economic migration. The twin fears of terrorist infiltration and inundation from illegal immigration have combined to create an environment in which countries of first asylum assume the worst when individuals seeking protection arrive on their doorstep.

Meanwhile, there are an estimated 200 million people now living outside their country of origin, and only a portion of this migration is from poor countries of the global South to the industrialized world.

With high levels of economic imbalance within developing regions and with poverty often associated with internal conflict and human rights abuses, refugee flows amidst the movement of economic migrants are a common phenomenon within the South.

China, Thailand, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt are among countries that are magnets both for individuals fleeing persecution and for those seeking employment and greater economic opportunity.

These developments combine to pose special challenges for protecting the world’s twelve million refugees. While camps will still be required and appropriate in some places—in Chad, for example, to shelter refugees from Darfur—the trend will be for more and more refugees to find themselves either forcibly or voluntarily trying to survive among the underclass in urban areas.

UNHCR and the non-governmental organizations that provide services with its support will have to adjust the way they work.