Migrants hold their babies as they try to warm themselves next to a river in Edirne, Turkey, near the Turkish-Greek border on Wednesday, March 4, 2020. /AP
First, political pressure in receiving rich nations began to limit numbers.
Now, refugee resettlement flows have been severely curtailed by COVID-19.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said Monday that it managed to find homes abroad for less than 2 percent of the refugees earmarked for resettlement in 2020.
The 22,700 resettled out of an estimated 1.44 million were the lowest numbers experienced in almost two decades, the UNHCR said.
The drop stems from low quotas put forward by states, some of which face domestic pressure to restrict foreign incomers, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed departures and programs.
"We can only hope that 2020 will be an extreme anomaly for refugee resettlement," Gillian Triggs, the UNHCR's assistant high commissioner for protection, was quoted as saying in a news release.
"We urgently call on governments to boost their programs this year, offer more places, expedite the processing of cases and help us save lives of those most in need and at greatest risk."
The call may be answered by the new Joe Biden administration in the United States.
U.S. news reports say the American president plans to raise the annual refugee admissions cap to 125,000.
His predecessor Donald Trump had put the ceiling for this fiscal year at a record low of 15,000.
'Resettlement can be managed during pandemic'
Last week, a spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he welcomes the "positive steps" announced by the new American administration relating to migration and refugees.
Migrants make protective masks at Moria camp on the island of Lesvos, Greece, March 15, 2020. /AP
According to UNHCR figures, the U.S. resettled the highest number of refugees last year, 6,740, but this was less than a third of the 21,159 that it admitted in 2019, when the agency resettled 63,696 refugees overall.
The largest numbers of resettled refugees in 2020 originated from Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar.
Triggs said the fact that resettlement continued even at a vastly reduced pace during the pandemic showed that the process could be managed "as long as there are proper and adequate health and safety protocols in place."
"Last year was an extremely challenging one for people across the globe but even more so for so many refugees who are already living on the margins, struggling to survives," she said.
Meanwhile, in a statement to the Security Council on Monday, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock said the world body estimates that 235 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection this year, 40 percent more than 2020, almost entirely because of COVID-19.
"While the humanitarian community has managed to sustain and scale-up assistance to an unprecedented level, that effort has been outpaced by the growing scale of this crisis," Lowcock warned.
The UN-coordinated humanitarian system needs $35 billion in 2021 "if we are to avoid some of the worst-case scenarios that lie on the horizon," he said.