GLOBAL NUMBER OF REFUGEES DROPPED 14 PER CENT IN 2002 - UN AGENCY
New York, Jun 20 2003 1:00PM

As the international community marked World Refugee Day today, the United
Nations refugee agency reported a 14 per cent drop in global numbers of
asylum seekers and announced landmarks in two major target areas - the
return of well over 2 million people to Afghanistan and the launching of a
large-scale repatriation project for Angola.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that at the beginning of
2003, there were an estimated 10.3 million refugees worldwide, a decrease
of 1.7 million compared to a year earlier. But the total population of
concern to UNHCR, including refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced
persons (IDPs) as well as those who returned during the year, increased
slightly from 19.8 million in early 2002 to some 20. 5 million in early
2003, it added.

UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a press briefing in Geneva the main
reason for the refugee decline was the repatriation of Afghans from
Pakistan and Iran, and he said that this weekend the number was poised to
pass a quarter million for 2003, bringing the total since the fall of the
Taliban regime to well over 2 million. But, he added, 4 million Afghans
still remain in Pakistan and Iran.

The agency also launched today a major repatriation of some 220,000
Angolans living mainly in camps in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo (DRC). The return, to take place in several phases over the next
two years and eventually bring home a third of those driven from their
country by nearly three decades of civil war, began with two convoys of 500
people from three camps in the DRC. Since May 2002, some 100,000 Angolans
have already returned home on their own.

Figures released by UNHCR also showed that 76,000 refugees from Sierra
Leone, 53,000 from Burundi, 37,000 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 32,000
Somalis and 32,000 from Timor-Leste returned home in 2002.

But nearly 300,000 refugees became newly displaced, including 105,000 from
Liberia, 39,000 from DRC, 29,000 from Burundi, 24,000 from Somalia, 22,000
from Cote d'Ivoire and 20,000 from Central African Republic.

Despite the mass return of Afghan refugees, Asia continues to host the
largest refugee population (4.2 million), although its share in the global
number fell from 48 per cent to 40 per cent. Africa hosts the second
largest (3.3 million), followed by Europe (2.2. million), North America
(610,000), Oceania (65,000) and Latin America and the Caribbean (41,000).

UN News Service