World: Europe Resettlement: January - June 2019
Overview
In the first six months of 2019, just over 20,200 refugees were submitted by UNHCR for resettlement to 18 countries in Europe. This is almost two-thirds of the total submission in 2018, and already more than double the average rate of 17,800 submissions per year during the previous 10 years. Three countries that received smaller numbers of resettlement submissions in 2018 have not yet received submissions during 2019.
Europe’s proportion of resettlement submissions globally in 20194 is 48%. Between 2009 and 2016, this proportion increased from 10% to 18%, before substantially increasing to 52% during 2017 and 40% during 2018. The increase in 2017 is primarily due to a significant decrease globally in the scale of some States’ resettlement programmes, most notably by the United States of America, but also to an increase of resettlement places made available by European States.
