The number of people who have been displaced by conflict in the world has reached a record high according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
In it’s annual report. the UN Rfugee agency says that at the end of 2014, there were 59.5 million refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people, up from 51.2 million a year earlier.
Ten years ago the number of globally displaced people stood at 37.5 million. “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,” the report said.
“Worldwide, one in every 122 human beings is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. Were this the population of a country, it would be the world’s 24th biggest,” the UNHCR continued.
According to the report, Syria is currently the biggest driver of displacement as a result of its ongoing civil war.
In that country alone, there were 3.9 million refugees and 7.6 million internally displaced persons.
“We are 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 António Guterres.
“It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other the international community seems utterly incapable of working together to stop wars and build peace,” Guterres said.
According to the report one in every 122 people on the planet were either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum.
The document also points to a 50% rise – to 6.7 million – of displaced people across Europe, which is struggling to deal with a growing crisis of migrants crossing the Mediterranean.
It says Germany had the highest number of asylum applications among the 28-member European Union, followed by Sweden.
The report’s data corresponds to the findings by the EU’s Eurostat, which were released earlier this year.
