Ahead of the World Refugee Day to be commemorated on June 20, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) says the refugee population in Uganda increased by 44 per cent in 2017, compared to the previous year.
The UNHCR Global Trends Report 2017 released on Tuesday attributes the increase to new arrivals of refugees from neighboring South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, pushing the number to 1.4 million refugees.
The report showed that Uganda currently hosts some 1,037,400 South Sudanese refugees, 226,200 Congolese refugees, 38,200 Burundian refugees, 25,000 Somali refugees and 14,300 Rwandese refugees.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the report showed that the number of refugees increased by 22 percent (1.1 million people) during 2017, mainly due to the crisis in South Sudan, from where more than 1 million people fled to Sudan and Uganda.
The report said with 6.3 million refugees, the sub-Saharan region hosted almost one-third of the world’s refugee population.
According to UNHCR most of the displacement is due to conflict, persecution, human rights abuses and food insecurity.
