EUROPE HOSTS FEW REFUGEES
For decades, Afghans have also migrated or fled to Europe. Between 2015 to 2016, 300,000 arrived on the continent. They were the second-largest group of refugees and asylum-seekers after Syrians.
The Afghan population across the European continent remains small and unevenly distributed. Up until the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021, many Afghans were facing deportations. Germany is the largest European host, followed by Austria, France and Sweden.
For the first three months of 2021 about 7,000 Afghans were granted permanent or temporary legal status in the European Union. They are distributed between Greece, France, Germany and Italy, with smaller Afghan contingents in other EU states.
Australia – based on its 2016 census – has approximately 47,000 Afghans who are permanent residents, some of whom began arriving as early as 1979. Approximately another 4,200 Afghans have received temporary protected status.
DISPLACED WITHIN AFGHANISTAN
This still leaves an enormous number of Afghans who are displaced without a permanent home.
More than half a million have already been displaced by the violence so far in 2021 according to the UN refugee agency. Some 80 per cent of nearly a quarter of a million Afghans forced to flee since the end of May are women and children.
As of 2021 and prior to the current crisis, at least 3.5 million Afghans remained uprooted within Afghanistan because of violence, political unrest, poverty, climate crisis and lack of economic opportunity.
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