More efforts needed to tackle refugee crisis

World Refugee Day, which is observed on June 20 every year, yet again highlighted the plight of migrants worldwide amid gruesome UN reports the number of refugees and others fleeing their homes worldwide has hit a new record of 65.3 million people by the end of 2015.
“This is the first time that the threshold of 60 million has been crossed,” the UN refugee agency said. With this figure, one in every 133 people worldwide is now either internally displaced or a refugee.
This development is also compounded with increasing lack of political will to assist the refugees due to lack of capacity or anti-migrant political sentiment or xenophobia.
In a statement on World Refugee Day, the UAE said it will remain the protective shield for refugees to ease their suffering and protect their human dignity. It called on the international community to make further efforts to reduce the refuge phenomenon and shoulder responsibility to provide a better life for victims of such circumstances.
Conflicts, persecution and natural disasters are the main culprits behind influx of migrants. Of the planet’s 65.3 million displaced, 40.8 million remain within their own country, while 21.3 million have fled across borders and are now refugees. Palestinians are the largest group of refugees at more than five million, including those who fled at the creation of Israel in 1948 and their descendants. Syria is next on the list, with 4.9 million refugees, followed by Afghanistan at 2.7 million and Somalia at 1.1 million.
Longer conflicts such as in Afghanistan and Somalia have been causing large refugee outflows. New conflicts in South Sudan, Yemen, Burundi and the Central African Republic, including Syria, are exacerbating the situation.
But the response to resettle the refugees has been minimum as the world gives a cold shoulder. “The rate at which solutions are being found for refugees and internally displaced people has been on a falling trend since the end of the Cold War,” the UN agency said.
In March, Brussels and Ankara struck a deal to stem Europe’s migrant crisis. So far, this deal is holding and achieving success.
Germany, which has pushed harder for the deal, received the highest number of asylum requests (441,900) over the 12-month span, demonstrating the country’s “readiness to receive people who were fleeing to Europe via the Mediterranean”.
The influx of migrants into Europe was a rude awakening for European Union and international community. “It is only when they started arriving in Europe together with many other refugees that the international community suddenly remembered,” UN refugee agency said. A record 1.25 million Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis and other migrants have entered Europe since January 2015. This huge figure pushed the decision to action.
There is no better solution to the refugee crisis than restoring peace in the conflict zones. This call may look ambitious, but through international political will, peace could be restored and the refugees could go back home.