The UNHCR’s report on global trends for individual asylum applications for 2010 show that South Africa was the highest recipient of new individual asylum applications for the third year running, having accounted for a fifth of total global applications.
A total of 180 600 individual asylum applications were received by South Africa in 2010, with most of them coming from citizens displaced from Zimbabwe, where political violence is on the increase again.
Although the figures are 19 per cent lower than the 2009 total of 22 300, the UNHCR said that SA still recorded four times higher than the 2007 total of 45 600 applications.
“Similar to previous years, Zimbabwe accounted for the vast majority of all claims submitted in 2010, with 146 600 applications or 81 per cent,” read the UNHCR report.
Nine out of 10 Zimbabwean asylum claims were lodged in South Africa alone.
Zimbabwe also has 24 089 internally displaced persons living in refugee-like situations within their own country.
Post published in: Africa News