Europe is, unfortunately, a continent with strict and limited laws in asylum policy matters. The biggest percentage of Refugees in Canada come precisely from Europe, António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees explained this week, in the European Parliament.

Around the world 10 million people live in refugee camps – which it is the total population of countries as Belgium or Portugal.

Besides well know threats such as war and violence, nowadays, there are also climatic refugees – a problem that will certainly increase during the next years, and as Guterres mentioned “should be seen as part of the same problematic. We have to see Refugees problems in a global way!”

In the last two years there was a small increase in the number of refugees because of new or reawake conflicts and the return of insecurity to areas where peace had already been created. On the contrary, there has been a significant augment in the number of resettled people from countries in the developed world. A European resettlement programme is being established and the report of Rui Tavares, member of GUE/NGL and European Left is an important contribution to create a fund for refugees; For the moment, we still have a mixture of completely different national asylum systems in the member states which it makes things more difficult.

The High Commissioner also admitted that, we have, currently, a negative trend on migration, as usually in periods of economic crisis.

At the same time we are witnessing new trends of forced displacement. A refugee is someone who flees a country for a well founded fear of persecution or a conflict. What we are getting more and more is situations where people are forced to flee because of environmental degradation or extreme poverty.

 

Next year, we celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the refugee convention, and Guterres hope that this will open a wider debate in this problem. “A true harmonisation is necessary!”, he added.