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Thursday 18 Jun 2015 - 18:42 Makkah mean time-1-9-1436
Record number of refugees (Google image)
Geneva (IINA) – Conflicts and violence raging around the world sent the number of people forced to flee their homes soaring to a record 60 million last year, according to new annual Global Trends report of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) released on Thursday.
The report showed a sharp escalation in the number of people forced to flee their homes, with 59.5 million people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 compared to 51.2 million in 2013 and 37.5 million a decade ago. The increase since 2013 was the highest ever seen in a single year.
In 2014, an average of 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced every day, representing a four-fold increase in just four years, according to AFP.
"Things ... are getting out of control simply because the world seems to be at war," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters ahead of the launch of UNHCR's annual report. He stressed that “the conflicts in Syria and Iraq alone had forced 15 million people to flee their homes”.
"We do not have the capacity, the resources for all victims of conflicts. We are no longer able to pick up the pieces," Guterres said, adding that "impunity and unpredictability" in war seem to have become "the name of the game".
The main acceleration has been since early 2011 when war erupted in Syria, propelling it into becoming the world’s single largest driver of displacement.
In the past five years, at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited: Eight in Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, northeastern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and this year in Burundi); three in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, and Yemen); one in Europe (Ukraine) and three in Asia (Kyrgyzstan, and in several areas of Myanmar and Pakistan).
In 2014, just 126,800 refugees were able to return to their home countries, the lowest number in 31 years. Over half the world’s refugees are children, according to the report.
AB/IINA
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