The United Nations’ refugee agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is out with a dismal new report that shows global refugee numbers are their highest level since World War II, with more than 50 million people on the run.
In some conflicts, as many as half the refugees are children.
Many of the displaced children travel alone or in groups, which puts them at extra risk of falling into the hands of human traffickers. Children younger than 18 years old represented 50% of the overall refugee population, the report says, the highest figure in ten years.
The UN cites the ongoing Syrian civil war as the “primary cause” for the steep numbers. More than two million people - half of them children - have fled the on-going conflict.
Speaking with reporters in the Lebanese capital Beirut, U.N. High Commissioner Antonio Gutteres called the numbers “a quantum leap in forced displacement,” saying: "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.”
Of 51.2 million people displaced worldwide last year, 16.7 million were refugees outside their countries' borders. Nearly 12 million of them are cared for by U.N. agencies. More than half of the refugees under UNHCR's care — 6.3 million — had been in exile for more than five years, the agency said.
By country, the biggest populations of refugees were Afghans, Syrians and Somalis, the report said.
The countries hosting the largest number of refugees were Pakistan, Iran and Lebanon, a country whose stability is threatened by the raging Syrian war, now in its fourth year. Afghanistan has over 2.5 million refugees distributed across 86 countries, the report says, representing one out of every five refugees. A whopping 95% of those refugees have fled to Pakistan or Iran.
Syria, the report warns, could replace Afghanistan in 2014 as the leading country for refugees. In fact, the past year saw the largest exodus by a group of people since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Conflicts in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan, Somalia and Iraq all contributed to the flood of people fleeing their homes for the safety of neighboring countries.