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Global refugee numbers exceed 50 million, more than half of them children

20 June 2014
2 minute read

The number of people fleeing hardship and violence has exceeded 50 million for the first time since the Second World War according to a report issued for 2013 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The report was released on the occasion of World Refugee Day.  

At the end of last year there were 51.2 million refugees, asylum seeker, and persons displaced from their home countries worldwide. Refugee numbers grew by six million compared to 2012. 

Every fifth refugee had to leave his or her home country just last year. The UN says the situation in Syria is especially dramatic where, due to the civil war, 6.5 million people are fleeing and another 2.5 million have already left the country. 

Displaced persons and refugees have significantly increased in Africa as well. "We are following the enormous impacts of wars that just don’t want to end," as well as fruitless efforts to resolve those conflicts, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. 

The cause of the dramatic growth in the number of refugees, according to the High Commissioner, is both the dramatic rise in the number of new crises, such as in the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan and Ukraine, and the failure to resolve older crises. "Most conflicts and waves of refugees have political causes. Developments are showing that the international community has only limited options available for preventing conflicts or finding rapid solutions to them," Guterres said. 

The UN Security Council is reportedly paralyzed in many cases. The consequence of that is often chaos in which parties to conflict are under the impression that they can take action without suffering any criminal justice repercussions. 

By far the greatest number of refugees, currently 86 %, come from developing countries, according to the UN. The greatest number of them have found refuge in Pakistan, 1.6 million at the close of 2014.

Iran and Lebanon have the second and third-largest numbers of refugees. Of the world’s 1.1 million asylum seekers, most of them (109 600) applied for asylum in Germany last year, followed by the United States, the South African Republic, France and Sweden.

The most asylum requests were made in 2013 by Syrians (64 300), followed by citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo (60 400) and Burma/Myanmar (57 400). The UNHCR considers the sharp growth in the number of child refugees to be especially disturbing.

For the first time since the year 2000, children and youth comprise more than half of all refugees. Children separated from their parents filed a total of 25 300 asylum requests last year, an historical record.   

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