Refugees in South Asia

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Refugees in South Asia

While refugees in South Asian countries nowhere constitute a cohesive social group (with the possible exception of some groups from Afghanistan in western Pakistan), they are so numerous at the present time (1991) that an outline of their demography is appropriate in this volume. Three South Asian countries hold a total of about 4,085,800 refugees today, of whom only 293,000 are native to the region. Most do not live in formal refugee camps, but many do benefit, if only a little, from funds that have been funneled to them from Western nations and food provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The countries of origin of refugees, estimates of their Current numbers in each host country, and the main reason for their flight to that country are listed in the following table.

Host Country	Origin	Number	Reason for Flight
India	Sri Lanka	228,000	civil war between Sinhalese and secessionist Tamils
India	Tibet (China)	100,000	repression of Tibetan culture and religion by occupying Chinese forces
India	Bangladesh	65,000	mainly Biharis
India	Afghanistan	11,100	anticommunist freedom fighters (Mujaheddin)
India	Myanmar (Burma)	800	opponents of the military dictatorship
India	elsewhere	900
Nepal	Tibet (China)	14,000	repression of Tibetan culture and religion by occupying Chinese forces
Pakistan	Afghanistan	3,666,000	anticommunist freedom fighters (Mujaheddin)
Pakistan	Iran	1,100	opponents of the fundamentalist Islamic government
Pakistan	Iraq	1,700	opponents of the Ba'ath government

To put these figures into perspective, we might add that although South Asia contains 23 percent of the world's population, it currently holds less than 10 percent of the world's refugees. Africa remains the region of biggest refugee movements across national boundaries at this time.

See also Tamil of Sri Lanka