UN: 60m forced to flee in ‘era of displacement’

GENEVA: The world has entered a phase in which multiple crises have caused refugee numbers soar to unprecendented levels, with the international community failing to contain the situation, UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres said Thursday in Geneva.
Another post-World-War-II record was set last year as 59.5 million people were counted as refugees or as internally displaced people, with Syrians, Afghans and Somalians making up the biggest groups, High Commissioner Guterres said in his annual report.
This means that one in every 122 humans has fled abroad, has sought refuge within his or her country, or is seeking asylum.
"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," Guterres said.
Guterres said it was terrifying that "there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace."
Some 13.9 million people — equivalent to the London metropolitan area population — became newly displaced as they fled wars, persecution or oppression during 2014.
This figure was four times higher than in 2010, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said, noting that 15 conflicts had broken out or restarted in the past few years, including in the Central African Republic, Iraq, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.
Including people who fled in previous years and haven't returned home, there were 38 million internally displaced people, nearly 20 million refugees and 1.8 million asylum seekers last year.
More than half of the refugees were children.
Despite the record 219,000 people who crossed the Mediterranean to Europe last year and the ensuing migration debate in the European Union, UNHCR stressed that developing regions host 86% of the world's refugees.
Because of the conflict in neighbouring Syria, Turkey is the biggest refugee host country, followed by the developing countries of Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran and Ethiopia.
"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," Guterres said.
His report came two days after EU interior ministers met in Luxembourg but failed to find a common view on how to distribute refugees more fairly across the bloc.
While most migrants crossing the Mediterranean land in Italy and Greece, Germany and Sweden are the most popular EU countries for filing asylum claims, according to UNHCR. — dpa