Media Resource 4
Facts and Figures attributable to a respected source such as the UNHCR is handy to have at your finger tips when you are being interviewed by the media. But remember that these figures don’t tell the whole story. Behind each number is a real person who is suffering and so telling individual stories is also very powerful.
The Facts and Figures section on the Raising Awareness section on our websitewill have links to updated figures (for example this link to world maps on the current flow of refugees) so please check this out along with two recent news articles which provide helpful and relevant figures.
- Guardian article Ten Truths about Europe’s Refugee Crisis with relevant facts and figures which put Calais and numbers of asylum seekers in UK into perspective. (Cautionary note: there is one error in this article - 25,870 refers to decision made in the UK – not the number of applications)
- The Independent“How many asylum seekers are really coming to the UK as European migrant crisis continues” includes three useful graphs comparing figures for first time asylum claims in the UK with the rest of Europe, showing that we certainly do not take anything like our fair share.
Some useful facts / figures (correct on 19/08/2015)
- 62% arriving via the Mediterranean are from just three top refugee producing countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea
- Between 1-2.5% of those arriving via the Mediterranean are in Calais. (So the crisis is exaggerated and not so much in Calais but in Italy and Greece.)
- Lebanon hosts 1.2 million of the 4million Syrian refugees displaced by the current conflict. We have resettled 178, under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, though others have come in as individuals via the asylum route. The UNHCR have been calling for help from Europe to resettle the most vulnerable, and to ease the pressure on these poorer countries.
- At the end of 2014 there were 19.5m refugees (of nearly 60 million displaced people) in the world. 86% of them were hosted by developing countries (UNHCR) Turkey and Pakistan host more than 3 million between them.
- While they are waiting for a decision on their asylum claim asylum seekers in the UK are given accommodation, usually in a house they have to share with people from other countries, and provided with just £36.95 weekly allowance (France provides £56). This is supposed to take between 6-12months after they have had their initial interview, but it often takes much longer
- In 2014there were 24,914 applications for asylum in the UK. In the same year, 59% of initial applications were turned down, and 28% of appeals were successful. These figures do not necessarily relate to the same cohort of individuals. (The Migration Observatory)
- The number of refugees in UK has fallen by 76,000 in the last 4 years