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UNHCR Turkey Operational Update, October - December 2016

Countries
Türkiye
+ 7 more
Sources
UNHCR
Publication date
Origin
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2016 Key Figures

1: Turkey is the top refugee-hosting country in the world

28,901: Refugees submitted by UNHCR for resettlement (since 1 January 2016)

15,140: Refugees counselled on the work permit regulation by UNHCR and partners (Since March 2016)

24,703: Non-Syrian refugees and asylum seekers with specific needs identified by UNHCR and referred for assistance (since 1 January 2016)

32,047: Refugees and asylum-seekers received counselling from UNHCR Ankara (since 1 January 2016)

7,428: Officials and humanitarians trained by UNHCR on international protection (Since 1 January 2016)

Funding (as of 31 December

US $ 350.9 M requested for the operation

Priorities

  • Increase cooperation with municipalities to assist urban refugees

  • Strengthen outreach programmes to support the most vulnerable

  • Implement winter support plans for the 2016-1017 winter season

  • Continue roll-out of Syrian refugee verification exercise with DGMM

Highlights

  • Turkey continues to be the world’s largest refugee hosting country: 2,814,613 Syrians registered as of 22 December 2016 according to the Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM), out of whom 258,585 were hosted in refugee camps, and 2,556,046 were residing in host communities. In addition, 291,209 refugees and asylum-seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and a number of other countries were registered with UNHCR as of 31 December.

  • Close to 29,000 refugees were submitted for resettlement during 2016 – the highest level of resettlement submissions in the history of UNHCR Turkey.

  • UNHCR Turkey’s annual Participatory Assessment exercise with refugee communities took place in 30 locations across Turkey. As in previous years, this exercise was based on focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with different thematic areas identified for discussion in education, livelihoods, access to registration / documentation, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and child labour in order to ensure that refugees and people of concern are involved in the planning and implementation of the activities assisting them.

  • As temperatures dropped drastically in the country, around 610,000 refugees were able to protect themselves from the cold weather by December through UNHCR’s one-off cash assistance to urban refugees and delivery of winter packages to refugees in camp