Geneva – Global displacement levels will reach record levels driven by a food security crisis fuelled by the Ukraine war as more people are forced to flee their homes in poorer countries, the head of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) warned.
The U.N. body reported on Thursday that some 89.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, abuse and violence at the end of 2021. Millions more fled Ukraine or are displaced within its borders. Price hikes driven by blocked grain exports will stir up more displacement elsewhere.
Russia meanwhile on Wednesday said it has offered "safe passage" for Ukraine grain shipments from Black Sea ports but is not responsible for establishing the corridors and Turkey suggested that ships could be guided around sea mines.
The United Nations is trying to broker a deal to resume Ukraine exports and Russian food and fertilizer exports, which Moscow says are harmed by sanctions.
"If you have a food crisis on top of everything I have described – war, human rights, climate – it will just accelerate the trends I've described in this report," Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told journalists this week, describing the figures as "staggering".
"Clearly the impact if this is not resolved quickly will be pretty devastating." Already, more people were fleeing as a result of price hikes and violent insurgencies in Africa's Sahel region, he said.
Grandi also criticised what he called a "monopoly" of resources given to Ukraine whereas other programmes to help the displaced were underfunded.
"Ukraine should not make us forget other crises," he said, mentioning a two-year-old conflict in Ethiopia and a drought in the Horn of Africa.
The European Union's response to refugee crises has been "unequal", Grandi added. He compared the bickering between states over taking in small groups of migrants crossing the Mediterranean by boat with EU countries' generosity with Ukrainian refugees since Russia's invasion in February.
"Certainly, it proves an important point: responding to refugee influxes, to the arrival of desperate people on the shores or borders of rich countries is not unmanageable," he said. The report says that low-and-middle income countries hosted 83% of the world's refugees at the end of 2021.
-Reuters