Global Trends report: Worldwide displacement hits all-time high as war and persecution increase (video)
The UN Refugee Agency says worldwide displacement from wars, conflict and persecution is at the highest level ever recorded. And it’s getting worse. The UNHCR has released its annual Global Trends report, which says nearly 60 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 as compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago. “Wars, conflict and persecution have forced more people than at any other time since records began to flee their homes and seek refuge and safety elsewhere,” says the report. The increase represents the biggest leap ever seen in a single year. Moreover, the report said the situation was likely to worsen still further. Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. If this were the population of a country, it would be the world's 24th biggest. "We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. Since early 2011, the main reason for the acceleration has been the war in Syria, now the world's single-largest driver of displacement. Every day last year on average 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced, a four-fold increase in just four years. "It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace," Guterres added. Some 7.6 million Syrians are displaced within the country, while about 3.9 million are refugees in neighboring countries and elsewhere. Afghanistan, which has suffered over three decades of conflict, is the number two producer of refugees with nearly 2.6 million. Hundreds of thousands are displaced within the country. Afghanistan is followed by Somalia, producing more than one million refugees. Most alarmingly, however, it showed that over half the world's refugees are children. Almost nine out of every 10 refugees (86 per cent) are in regions and countries considered economically less developed. The full report is available here
