WORLDWIDE FORCED DISPLACEMENT is set to surpass 60 million people in 2015 for the first time.
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“2015 is on track to see worldwide forced displacement exceeding 60 million for the first time, 1 in every 122 humans is today someone who has been forced to flee their homes”, the report said. Figures show the global refugee total by mid-2015 had exceeded 20 million, the highest number since 1992; asylum claims had gone up by 78 percent from a year ago, and the numbers of internally displaced people had jumped by around two million to an estimated 34 million.
“We will have figures for 2016 worse than 2015”.
Germany was the world’s biggest recipient of asylum claims, clocking up 159,000 during the six months leading to June – close to the total for all of 2014.
Russian Federation received the next largest number of asylum applications – 100,000 in the first half of 2015 – mainly from people fleeing fighting in Ukraine.
High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said: “Forced displacement is now profoundly affecting our times”.
In six months in 2015 over 20 million people fled wars and persecution, more than in the whole of 2014, the United Nations has reported.
“Never has there been a greater need for tolerance, compassion and solidarity with people who have lost everything”.
Colombia once had one of the world’s highest internally displaced populations, due to long-term conflicts between the government and paramilitary groups; in June, a total of 6.5 million individuals were registered with the government as IDPs. “It is more and more hard to have conditions for people to be able to exercise what is a basic right of a refugee-the right of return, the possibility to go back to their lives”, Guterres added.
That basically means that one in every 122 people on the planet is today someone who has been forced to flee their home, the agency said. And, that is very worrying because what happens to people once they become refugees, today they are staying refugees often for very many years. Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan were the top five refugee generating countries in the first half of 2015 while Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran and Ethiopia were the top five refugee hosting countries in the first half of 2015.
Sub-Saharan Africa is recognised as host to the largest number of refugees (4.1 million), followed by Asia and Pacific (3.8 million), Europe (3.5 million), and the Middle East and North Africa (3.0 million).
Many refugees will live in exile for years to come, it said.
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Overall, the lion’s share of the global responsibility for hosting refugees continues to be carried by countries immediately bordering zones of conflict, many of them in the developing world. Alan has previously worked in-house for UK publishers, Pearson Media (Financial Times) and Northcliffe Newspapers, among others, and is an accredited member of the National Union of Journalists, UK.
