Wars and persecution have driven more people from their homes than at any time since UNHCR records began, according to a new report released Monday by the UN Refugee Agency.
According to a report from the U.N.’s refugee agency, the number of refugees topped 65.3 million at the end of the 2015. These numbers reveal some staggering new statistics.
The report, entitled Global Trends, noted that Each minute, 24 more people are forced to flee their homes due to persecution, war, and violence, four times more than a decade earlier, when six people fled every 60 seconds. 54 percent of these refugees come from Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Half the refugees are children under the age of 18.
The report found that, measured against the world’s population of 7.4 billion people, one in every 113 people globally is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee – putting them at a level of risk for which UNHCR knows no precedent.
It was also confirmed that three countries produce half the world’s refugees; Syria at 4.9 million, Afghanistan at 2.7 million and Somalia at 1.1 million.
These accounted for more than half the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate worldwide.
Colombia at 6.9 million, Syria at 6.6 million and Iraq at 4.4 million had the largest numbers of internally displaced people.
Distressingly, children made up an astonishing 51 per cent of the world’s refugees in 2015, according to the data UNHCR was able to gather (complete demographic data was not available to the report authors). Many were separated from their parents or travelling alone.
View the full report.
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