No asylum for refugees.

• Author: Runyan, Curtis
• Position: Countries' unwillingness to provide asylum to refugees

Last year, the number of international refugees reached a seven-year low of 15 million, according to the 1997 World Refugee Survey, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees. But during the last decade, the number of internally displaced people has doubled to an estimated 25 to 30 million - a trend increasingly driven by the international community's growing reluctance to grant asylum to those who need it. Although internally displaced people generally leave their homes for the same reasons that officially recognized refugees do - systematic human-rights violations, for example, or armed conflicts - they are not usually counted as refugees because they have not crossed an international border. Subsequently, they do not usually qualify for international aid.

Fewer countries than ever before are now willing to accept refugees, according to Amnesty International's 1997 annual report. Many countries have introduced laws designed to deny asylum to those in need, while others have simply closed their borders to refugees. "One of the most difficult problems confronting my office in recent years has been the decline of asylum, even on a temporary basis," said Sadako Ogata, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, in a recent address. "The threat to asylum has taken on a global character, affecting both the developing as well as the industrialized world."

Developed countries, according to the Amnesty report, host only 15 percent of all refugees and employ numerous legal and bureaucratic measures to prevent that fraction from growing. For example, several European nations have denied asylum to thousands of Algerians fleeing the political violence that has caused more than 50,000 deaths in their country since 1992. To support the denials, European officials argue that there is no proven risk of human tights abuse in Algeria, yet the same nations have issued advisories warning their own citizens against traveling there.

The vast majority of refugees end up in the world's poorer countries - those least likely to have the resources to cope with them. Despite the burdens involved, many developing countries have a strong tradition of hospitality to refugees, yet even these countries are growing increasingly reluctant to accept more of them. In much of Africa, for example, asylum has traditionally been relatively easy to secure. But...