Conflicts & War

Japanese foreign minister returns from Poland with 20 Ukrainian refugees

Tokyo, Apr 5 (EFE).- Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi returned from Poland on Tuesday with 20 displaced Ukrainian citizens whom Japan will grant residence cards and state support.

During his trip to Poland, focused on expressing solidarity with the refugee crisis that Europe is facing due to the ongoing war, Hayashi met Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

In a meeting on Monday with his Polish counterpart, Zbigniew Rau, the Japanese minister said Tokyo intended to welcome “as many (Ukrainians) as possible” from a humanitarian standpoint.

Japan has already accepted 404 Ukrainian refugees since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb.24.

More than 4.21 million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the war, of whom some 2.45 million have sought refuge in Poland, data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees showed.

Japan has a very restrictive refugee policy that limits the number of people allowed to enter and reside due to political, humanitarian, or other circumstances that have led them to abandon their countries of origin.

In 2020, the Japanese government granted refugee status to 47 people out of the nearly 4,000 applicants.

The government also granted residency on humanitarian grounds to another 44 people who did not fulfill the criteria to be refugees, data from the justice ministry showed.

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