The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, called Monday for a concerted international effort to better understand and deal with the causes, scale and complexity of global displacement and migration.
"The present century is a time of human displacement," said the chief of the agency, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, at an annual meeting of UNHCR's governing Executive Committee.
"With each economic opportunity and departing vessel, with every calamity and conflict, the 21st century is being marked by people on the move," Guterres said.
While emphasizing that the UNHCR was not a migration management agency, Guterres noted that the effectiveness of the agency in protecting the world's refugees depended on its ability to better understand the broader patterns of human movement in today's world.
He cited several reasons for the dramatic growth in migration, including poverty and the pursuit of a better standard of living.
To fulfill the UNHCR's mandate to protect refugees and others in need of protection within these huge movements, "we must recognize the mixed nature of many present-day population flows," Guterres said.
According to the UNHCR, it had assisted a total of 32.9 million people by the end of last year, including nearly 10 million refugees, 13 million people displaced internally within their own countries, and 5.8 million stateless people.
After several years of decline, the number of refugees fleeing conflict and persecution rose last year and continues to climb in 2007, the agency said.
Guterres stressed that targeted strategies and innovative answers were needed because the triggers of human flight were becoming increasingly interrelated.
"Many people move simply to avoid dying of hunger," Guterres noted. On the other hand, natural disasters occur more frequently and are of greater magnitude and devastating impact.
"Almost every model of the long-term effects of climate change predicts a continued expansion of desertification, to the point of destroying livelihood prospects in many parts of the globe," he said.
"And for each centimeter the sea level rises, there will be 1 million more displaced. The international community seems no more adept at dealing with these new causes than it is at preventing conflict and persecution."
Guterres added that it was extremely important to examine the reasons, scale and trends of present-day displacement. "It involves much more than understanding refugee flight."
Source: Xinhua
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