By Neeraj Nanda
MELBOURNE, 16 January 2021: The Indian diaspora continues to be the largest country of origin of international migrants (migrants living abroad) in the world, with 17.5 million of them living in other countries. Mexico has 11.8 million and China has 10.7 million migrants respectively. The top destination country remained the United States (50.7 million international migrants). The startling figures have come out from the World Migration Report 2020 released recently by the United Nations.
The introduction to the report starts off by saying, ” The long-term and growing body of evidence on migration and mobility shows that migration is in large part related to the broader global economic, social, political and technological transformations that are affecting
a wide range of high-priority policy issues. As the processes of globalization deepen, these transformations increasingly shape our lives – in our workplaces, in our homes, in our social and spiritual lives – as we go about our daily routines. Increasing numbers of people are able to access information, goods, and services from around the world because of the ongoing expansion in distance-shrinking technologies.”
Interestingly, the Mexican diaspora is mostly in the United States, the diaspora of India and China are spread all over the globe, in different countries. International remittances increased to USD 689 billion in 2018, the top countries being India (USD 78.6 billion), China (USD 67.4 billion), and Mexico (USD 35.7 billion).
The United States remained the top remittance-sending country (USD 68.0 billion) followed by the United Arab Emirates (USD 44.4 billion) and Saudi Arabia (USD 36.1 billion).
The report adds:
The global refugee population was 25.9 million in 2018
• 20.4 million refugees were under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and 5.5 million were refugees under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Near East.
• 52 percent of the global refugee population was under 18 years of age. The number of internally displaced persons due to violence and conflict reached 41.3 million
• This was the highest number on record since the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre began monitoring in 1998.
• The Syrian Arab Republic had the highest number of people displaced (6.1 million) followed by Colombia (5.8 million) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.1 million).
The number of stateless persons globally in 2018 was 3.9 million
• Bangladesh had the largest number of stateless persons (around 906,000). It was followed by Côte d’Ivoire (692,000) and Myanmar (620,000).
The report has 11 chapters and many key issues dealing with world migration are dealt with.
