There is no agreement on who first used the phrase “lies, damn lies and then there are statistics” – often attributed to author Mark Twain or British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and several others.
But on the occasion of the United Nations Refugee Day, the meaning of this phrase is best explained by a response that was published in Nature in November 1885: “A well-known lawyer, now a judge, once grouped witnesses into three classes: simple liars, damned liars, and experts. He did not mean that the expert uttered things which he knew to be untrue, but that by the emphasis which he laid on certain statements, and by what has been defined as a highly cultivated faculty of evasion, the effect was actually worse than if he had.”
Before going into why the statistics tell lies on the crisis of refugees, some figures can help understand the dimensions of the problem.
At the beginning of 2022 – before the Ukraine-Russia war – more than 92 million people worldwide had been forced to flee their homes, according to the nonprofit Concern Worldwide. That figure accounted for:
20.8 million refugees
50.8 million internally-displaced people, or IDPs
4.4 million asylum-seekers
4.2 million stateless persons
3.9 million Venezuelans displaced abroad
8.4 million people of concern to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Concern Worldwide says that in addition to these figures, 5.7 million Palestinians are registered under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which works on programmes and relief.
As of 2024, these figures have changed. In June, the United Nations said that this year and the last – 2024 and 2023 – “have seen historically high levels of forced displacement worldwide”. The UN Refugee Agency said that forced displacement rose to 120 million in May.
The statistics show the enormity of the problem and that is of course important – but what are these these figures used for? How far do they help the refugee, man, woman or child whose life is suddenly taken away from them, or when they are torn apart from their family, their home and their country to land in another country in the hope of peace and safety?
These statistics are used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and innumerable nonprofits funded by governments and private funders to raise “awareness” about the refugee crisis. How do they raise awareness? They spend money organising exhibitions of paintings by refugees, or sports, or food cooked by refugees.
There is little data on how much money goes towards spreading awareness on the refugee crisis and how much actually reaches millions of refugees surviving on barely one meal a day, unable to afford medical assistance and their children without access to education.
Take the case of a woman refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is in India. She has a serious kidney ailment and managed to have an operation but cannot afford the dialysis treatment she needs. Under Indian laws, she has no rights. She cannot have an Aadhaar card and therefore cannot open a bank account. This means she cannot even receive money from relatives who are settled abroad. Even if she could work, she is legally allowed to work in the unorganised sector and will not earn enough to pay her medical bills. She has to accept the fact that unless she gets resettlement she will die.
I do not know what happened to this woman because the nonprofit that told me her story and whom I gave some legal advice to never got back to me. Perhaps she got resettlement. Then, she would be included in the statistics of people who were resettled. She becomes a positive story – a picture of her smiling looking at the camera and hiding her pain, her anguish and the suffering she and her children have been through. Even if she dies, she would be counted in the positive cases settled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
There was an Afghan woman I saw outside the office of the refugee agency’s office in New Delhi. She was there with other refugees shouting slogans, demanding that someone come and meet them and explain their situation“If you can talk to the Taliban, why can’t you talk to me?” she shouted. I do not know who was hearing her behind the barricaded office with no light in the windows.
Then there is another statistic: A total of 193 workers of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency have been killed since Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip since October 7. But it does not speak of the crimes against humanity being committed by Israel and how each one of these UN workers were killed and it does not speak of the tragedy of each employee, or of their family. What were their last thoughts and what were the horrors they witnessed and how they felt?
These statistics do not speak about how one person decides to risk everything and walk for miles with others who are equally desperate, and sometimes entire families, to get to a country where they might be safe. Many die in the desert or in containers traffickers promised to smuggle them to safety. Their families back home never will know what happened to those who left but never reached and could not return.
These statistics do not speak about who is responsible for these trillion tragedies – for every refugee that leaves their country is a family left behind in precarious condition. The statistics do not say who bombed the lands, started the civil wars and even partitioned countries that led to the vast displacement and made refugees out of citizens.
The “positive stories” posted on the pages of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are as deceptive as the statistics published on their websites. Refugees spend years, even decades, before they get travel papers and citizenship. They face constant stress, anxiety and discrimination and their children are subjected to racism.
Behind the numbers is the unbearable anguish of a human being thrown out in the world with few rights, decades of uncertainty, days of hunger, an aching heart that longs for a home, a family and a world that is a little kinder. Look behind those statistics and ask if there is anything to celebrate in a refugee’s life?
Right next door to India, Myanmar is going through one of the longest civil wars in history, one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, and the result has been an “influx” of refugees. Think about the tragedy of each family, bombed out of their villages, living a hand-to-mouth existence within the borders of India. Instead of compassion and kindness, they face hatred, arrests and detention and even deportation.
If India has to offer humanitarian assistance, it could stop the flow of people and help them rebuild their lives.
Behind the statistics are several human tragedies, unbearable suffering and a bleak future with no hope. But it is possible to make the lives of refugees a little more bearable. It needs compassion from our government and from us, citizens. It needs solidarity not charity.
The greatest shame is that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi has been threatening and scaring refugees from protesting outside its office. It claims there is a case in court and a High Court order that prevents the refugees from gathering together outside the office.
The UN agency says there are channels through which each refugee can write their complaints. But the refugee agency knows as well as the refugees do that there is a power in organised protest and the collective expression of their anguish. By denying them this right, the UN agency has undermined the right to dignity of the refugees.
Refugees in India have a right to life and a right against arbitrary legal procedures under the Constitution. They must be allowed to enforce their right to live a life of dignity in the country.
Refugee Day is a day of shame and of universal condemnation of the wars that are driven by profit and greed for natural resources. It is these wars and conflicts that produce the refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people. Refugee Day should be a day to expose the lies, the damn lies and the statistics and assert our common humanity.
June 20 is World Refugee Day.
Nandita Haksar is a human rights lawyer and award-winning author.
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