The number of people forced out of their homes by conflict and crisis worldwide has surged past 50 million for the first time since World War II, with Syria's civil war being largely to blame for the increase, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.
A fast-growing web of crisis across the world forcibly displaced about 51.2 million people at the end of 2013, a full six million higher than the previous year, UNHCR stated in its annual Global Trends Report launched in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, on World Refugee Day.
A total of 2.5 million people have fled Syria since a civil war began in March 2011, with 6.5 million more displaced inside the country, the Associated Press reported. New waves of displacement were further sparked by the ongoing conflicts and persecutions afflicting the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
The report's data covers three groups: refugees, asylum-seekers, and the internally displaced. "The world has shown a limited capacity to prevent conflicts and to find a timely solution for them," UNHCR chief Antonio Gutteres told reporters. "Today, we not only have an absence of a global governance system, but we have sort of an unclear sense of power in the world.
Refugee numbers reached 16.7 million people worldwide, the highest since 2001, with Sub-Saharan Africa totaling 2.9 million and the Middle East and North Africa, 2.6 million.
"A total of 6.3 million have been exiled for over five years, the agency said -- noting it did not include five million Palestinians aided by the UN Relief and Works Agency, a separate body," according to Agence France-Presse. "Overall, the biggest refugee populations under UNHCR care came from Afghanistan, Syrian and Somalia, who together form over half the global refugee total."
While Pakistan, Iran and Lebanon were listed to be the world's top refugee hosts, Asia and the Pacific were regions with the largest refugee populations, with a total of 3.5 million people.
"These numbers represent a quantum leap in forced displacement around the world," Gutteres added. "For the first time since the Second World War, we had in 2013 more than 50 million people displaced by conflict and persecution either crossing borders or within the borders of their countries."
The daunting numbers are also straining the resources of host countries and aid organizations alike. "We are seeing here the immense costs of not ending wars, of failing to resolve or prevent conflict," said Guterres.
"Peace is today dangerously in deficit. Humanitarians can help as a palliative, but political solutions are vitally needed. Without this, alarming levels of conflict and the mass suffering that is reflected in these figures will continue," he warned.
The data was compiled from government, non-government partner organizations and UNHCR's own records.
