UN Dispatch: Top 4 countries in the world for refugees

From the UN Dispatch last week:

What makes a country a ‘good’ country for refugee resettlement, fairly assuming their burden in the global community? Here are four countries on three continents that both quantitatively and qualitatively stand out.

Guterres
Antonio Guterres has been the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for almost ten years. While he nags the western world (and particularly the US!) to take ever greater numbers of refugees, he hasn’t been able to persuade the country he once led as its Prime Minister to take more than a handful each year. In 2014 we learn Portugal took a whole 14 refugees!

With as many refugees arriving in Europe last month than all of last year, this question of where they can and should resettle is all the more urgent.What makes a country a ‘good’ country for refugee resettlement, fairly assuming their burden in the global community? Here are four countries on three continents that both quantitatively and qualitatively stand out.

With as many refugees arriving in Europe last month than all of last year, this question of where they can and should resettle is all the more urgent.

The UN goes on to say that the top 4 countries are (drum roll!):

Germany

Sweden 

United States 

Brazil

Continue reading here to see the rationale.

US took 67% of the refugees resettled around the world in 2014!

If you haven’t yet had a chance to look at the State Department’s report on the Proposed Refugee Admissions for FY2016, I highly recommend it (as a matter of fact, I have to stop posting now so I have some time today to continue studying it).
In the report we learn that the US aims to take 50% of the refugees referred by the UN each year, but what a surprise, in calendar year 2014 (Table VIII p. 70) we took 67% which was 48,911 refugees!
Germany took 3,467 (4.7% of the total resettled)
Sweden took 1,497 (2.1%)
Brazil took 44 (.06%)
And, just for fun!  The UNHCR Antonio Guterres is the former Prime Minister of Portugal and that country took 14 refugees in 2014!  So he couldn’t convince his own home country to WELCOME more?  (Portugal has promised to take 23 Syrians!)
This post is filed in our ‘where to find information’ category.

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