The number of people displaced from their homes across the world climbed slightly to 65.6 million previous year, with the escalating conflict in South Sudan accounting for the rise, the United Nations refugee agency said Monday.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, almost 66 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes past year as a result of persecution, violence and human rights violations.
Of this number, 22.5 million are refugees – those forced to leave their country; 40.3 million are displaced persons or those who find temporary shelter within the same country; and 2.8 million are asylum seekers – people who have fled their country and are seeing worldwide protection as refugees.
Global Trends, the annual report from the United Nations refugee agency, said “forced displacements” took place every three seconds.
Evacuees make bread inside a refugee camp in Erbil, Iraq, for people who fled from Mosul due to fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants.
By the end of a year ago, Syria had 12 million forcibly displaced people, and was the source of the largest number of refugees.
“By any measure this is an unacceptable number”, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement accompanying the report.
He said: “The displaced persons deserve to continue with their education and provided with safe living conditions“.
The agency’s annual Global Trends report, a statistical assessment of refugees, asylum seekers and people forcibly displaced from their homes, reflected a worsening of conflict, mayhem and persecution.
Yet the total number of people internally displaced dropped from 40.8 million to 40.3 million.
The report notes that most refugees – 84 percent – are in developing countries, half of them children. Of these, 17.2 million come under the responsibility of UNHCR, and the remainder are Palestinian refugees registered with our sister-organization UNRWA.
In a statement on World Refugee Day, the United Nations children’s fund said the money is needed for emergency aid as well as “resilience interventions” targeting both refugees and host communities over the next four years.
In 2016, the conflict in South Sudan became the fastest-growing displacement of people in the world.
More than 1.8 million people have crossed into neighbouring countries since the start of South Sudan’s conflict in December 2013.
In 2016, war-ravaged South Sudan joined the list when approximately 737,400 people fled the country after peace efforts broke down in July.
“Some survived, later calling people they knew on the first boat to say they had been rescued by the Libyans”. The Spectator Index estimates that Turkey is home to about 2.7 million, Lebanon to 1.1 million and Jordan to about 657,000 Syrian refugees. Some 37 countries together accepted 189,300 refugees for resettlement.
Indeed, Uganda is now Africa’s leading refugee-hosting country, having jumped from the eighth largest refugee-hosting country in the world in mid-2016 to the third largest today, after Turkey and Pakistan.