UNHCR's annual Global Trends Report finds 2014 has seen continuing dramatic growth in mass displacement from wars and conflict
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says wars, conflict and persecution has displaced more people than at any other time in history.
UNHCR's annual Global Trends Report: World at War was released today and can be read here.
In releasing the report, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said: "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."
According to the UNHCR report, 59.5 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago. The increase since 2013 was the highest ever seen in a single year.
The report says in its introduction: "The year 2014 has seen continuing dramatic growth in mass displacement from wars and conflict, once again reaching levels unprecedented in recent history. One year ago, UNHCR announced that worldwide forced displacement numbers had reached 51.2 million, a level not previously seen in the post-World War II era. Twelve months later, this figure has grown to a staggering 59.5 million, roughly equalling the population of Italy or the United Kingdom. Persecution, conflict, generalized violence, and human rights violations have formed a 'nation of the displaced' that, if they were a country, would make up the 24th largest in the world."
UNHCR notes that at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited in the past five years. Eight in Africa (Côte d'Ivoire, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, northeastern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and this year in Burundi); three in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, and Yemen); one in Europe (Ukraine) and three in Asia (Kyrgyzstan, and in several areas of Myanmar and Pakistan).
Syria is the world's biggest producer of both internally displaced people (7.6 million) and refugees (3.88 million at the end of 2014). Afghanistan (2.59 million) and Somalia (1.1 million) are the next biggest refugee source countries.
Children below 18 years of age constituted 51 per cent of the refugee population in 2014, up from 41 per cent in 2009 and the highest figure in more than a decade.
The UNHCR report says that a record high of nearly 1.7 million individuals submitted applications for asylum or refugee status in 2014. UNHCR offices registered 245,700 or 15 per cent of these claims. With 274,700 asylum claims, the Russian Federation was the world's largest recipient of new individual applications, followed by Germany (173,100), the United States of America (121,200), and Turkey (87,800).
Over the course of 2014, 126,800 refugees returned to their countries of origin. Half of these returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (25,200), Mali (21,000), or Afghanistan (17,800). This figure was the lowest level of refugee returns since 1983.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres called on countries to commit to "tolerance and protection" in the face of the refugee crisis.
"With huge shortages of funding and wide gaps in the global regime for protecting victims of war, people in need of compassion, aid and refuge are being abandoned. For an age of unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented humanitarian response and a renewed global commitment to tolerance and protection for people fleeing conflict and persecution," he said.