Over 65 million displaced – new world record
With over 65 million people displaced worldwide by the end of last year, easily setting a new postwar record, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) warned on Monday that European and other rich nations can expect the tide to continue if root causes aren't addressed. In a year when more than a million people arrived on European shores, UNHCR said continued conflicts and persecution in places like Syria and Afghanistan fueled a nearly 10-percent increase in the total number of refugees and internally displaced people in 2015. The figures contained in the Geneva-based agency's latest Global Trends Report were issued on Monday, to mark the June 20 World Refugee Day. The report showed that for the first time since World War II, the 60 million mark was crossed, even topping the equivalent of the total U.K. population of about 64.6 million.
“I hope that the message carried by those forcibly displaced reaches the leaderships: We need action, political action, to stop conflicts,'' said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. In a message for World Refugee Day, he noted that each year his agency seeks to find a glimmer of hope in the global statistics they publish but this year the hopeful signs are hard to find. “Against this tragic backdrop,” he said, “divisive political rhetoric on asylum and migration issues, and disturbing levels of xenophobia, are together threatening the international agreements which protect those forced to flee war or persecution.”
UNHCR noted that on an average, 24 people had been displaced every minute of every day last year _ or 34,000 people a day _ up from 6 every minute in 2005. Global displacement has roughly doubled since 1997, and risen by 50 percent since 2011 alone _ when the Syria war began. About 11.5 million people from Syria had fled their homes: 6.6 million within the war-ravaged country and 4.9 million abroad. More than half of all refugees came from three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, and more than half of all displaced people were children, UNCHR said.
Turkey was the top host country for the second year running, taking in 2.5 million people _ nearly all from neighboring Syria. Afghan neighbor Pakistan had 1.6 million, while Lebanon, next to Syria, hosted 1.1 million. UNHCR said the total figures of forcibly displaced people amounted to about one in every 113 people on the planet.
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