Global refugee number hits all-time high: UNHCR
UNB
The number of people forced to flee their homes and seek refuge and safety elsewhere for wars, conflict and persecution rose to a record 59.5 million across the globe in 2014, reports UNB quoting a new report of the UN refugee agency. Wars, conflict and persecution have forced more people than any other time in history to flee their homes and seek refuge, said the report. UNHCRs annual Global Trends Report: World at War, released yesterday said worldwide displacement was at the highest level ever recorded. It said the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 had risen to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago. The increase represents the biggest leap ever seen in a single year. Besides, the report said the situation was likely to worsen. 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 worlds 24th biggest. Were 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 Antnio Guterres. Since early 2011, the main reason for the acceleration has been the war in Syria, now the worlds 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. The UNHCR report detailed how in region after region, the number of refugees and internally displaced people is on the rise. In the past five years, at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited: 8 in Africa (Cte dIvoire, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Burundi); 3 in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, and Yemen); 3 in
