The number of displaced people in the world rose by 16.2 million in 2017 to reach unprecedented 68.5 million people, according to a report by a UN agency.
The report, ‘Global Trends’, which is an annual document prepared by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was released on the eve of the World Refugee Day on Wednesday, June 20.
“In short, the world had almost as many forcibly displaced people in 2017 as the population of Thailand,” said UNHCR in a press statement.
According to the UNHCR, those who were displaced in 2017, either for the first time or repeatedly, “indicate a huge number of people on the move and equivalent to 44,500 people being displaced each day, or a person becoming displaced every two seconds.”
The increasing number of refugees and displaced, which has been going on for five consecutive years, came last year due to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, war in South Sudan, and the influx of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh. “Refugees who have fled their countries to escape conflict and persecution accounted for 25.4 million of the 68.5 million. This is 2.9 million more than in 2016, also the biggest increase UNHCR has seen in a single year,” said the statement.
On the other hand, the number of asylum seekers as of December 31, 2017 “rose by around 300,000 to 3.1 million.”
Two-thirds of the forced displaced come from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia. On the other hand, Turkey remained the world’s leading refugee-hosting country in terms of absolute numbers with a population of 3.5 million refugees, mainly from Syria.
Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees relative to its national population. According to the UN agency, 63 per cent of all refugees under the UNHCR mandate are in just 10 countries.
“We are at a watershed moment, where success in managing forced displacement globally requires a new and far more comprehensive approach so that countries and communities aren’t left dealing with this alone,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi was quoted as saying.
