War victims: 10% of Ukrainians—4 mn—will be refugees by July, says UNHCR

Virendra Pandit 

New Delhi: As the human tragedy unfolds in Ukraine, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said, nearly 4 million people, or 10 percent of the war-ravaged country, would become refugees in their own and neighboring countries.

This is the biggest migration of refugees in Europe since the end of the Second World War, which ended in 1945.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, over 2.11 million people have already been displaced, it said on Wednesday.  By July, their number would swell to four million, nearly as many as the Venezuelan crisis created.

“In the first week of the war, over a million refugees from Ukraine crossed borders into neighboring countries. As the situation continues to unfold, about 4 million people may flee Ukraine,” the UNHCR said on its website.

Over 60 percent of them, or 1.20 million, fled to Poland alone. Many took shelter in bordering countries, like Hungary and Slovakia. On March 6, the maximum number of Ukrainians, over 200,000, left their country.

According to the UNHCR, by July 2022, Poland alone will house almost 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees while Hungary and Romania will receive over 2.5 million, followed by Moldova (100,000) and Slovakia (60,000).

Also, over 99,300 Ukrainians, or 5 percent, crossed the eastern border to shift to Russia. In the February 18-23 period, another 96,000 people moved to the Russian Federation from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which Russia recognized as separate countries last month.

It would economically burden the host countries with this huge refugee inflow. According to their Regional Refugee Response Plan, between March and August, they will require USD 550 million to solve the refugee problem. Poland alone will require USD 202 million, followed by Moldova (USD 121 million).

Six UN bodies and five non-profit organizations have partnered to work during the crisis. On Monday, the World Bank had approved a USD 723 million package of loans and grants for Ukraine, assuring it to work on another USD 3 billion packages of support in the next few months.

Citing the Crimea conflict of 2014, it said at least 1.4 million people were internally displaced, mostly going to Poland.

As of December 2021, nearly 3 million Ukrainians required humanitarian support. They included over 850,000 displaced by the Crimean conflict, 5,000 refugees, and 36,000 stateless people.

But the migration of refugees from Ukraine is less than that of 14 million people who fled between India and Pakistan during their Partition in 1947, and 10 million from what is now Bangladesh, in 1971.

Since 2011, the Syrian civil war displaced 6.7 million people. Eastern Europe had refused the entry of most Syrian refugees, while Germany and Sweden accepted them.