São Paulo – The number of refugees, internally displaced persons and asylum applicants should hit an all-time high at 60 million people this year, according to the latest Mid-Year Trends Report released this Friday (18) by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland. According to the report, Syria, which is plagued by conflict since 2011, is the top issuer of displaced persons, with Lebanon as the country welcoming the most refugees relative to the size of its population. In absolute numbers, Turkey is the biggest hosting country.
The UNHCR report makes projections for 2015 based on data from January to June. By June, there were 20.2 million refugees around the world, the highest number since 1992. The number of people requesting asylum was up 78% from January to June 2014 to 993,600 people. The number of internally displaced people jumped by around 2 million to an estimated 34 million.
“2015 is on track to see worldwide forced displacement exceeding 60 million for the first time – 1 in every 122 humans is someone who has been forced to flee their home,” UNHCR said. In 2014, the number had been 59.5 million. “Forced displacement is now profoundly affecting our times. It touches the lives of millions of our fellow human beings – both those forced to flee and those who provide them with shelter and protection” said High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.
In the first half of 2015, 839,000 people were forced not only to leave their homes, but also their countries of residence. According to the report, Syria remained the leading “generator” of refugees and internally displaced people. By mid-year, 4.2 million were internally displaced in Syria, and the number of Syrian refugees soared by 300,000.
Turkey had welcomed the most Syrians by the end of June, at 1.8 million, and is close to reaching 2.2 million in December. Lebanon received 1.2 million Syrians and Jordan accommodated 628,800, followed by Iraq with 251,300 and Egypt with 131,900. Lebanon welcomed 208 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants.
The Syrian conflict was not the sole driver of this high displacement rate. The UNHCR mentions wars in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Burundi, Mali, Ukraine and Somalia as also contributing to the increased flows of refugees, displaced people and asylum applicants.
The document notes that it only partly reflects Europe’s influx of people, since arrivals there have escalated in the second half of 2015 and outside the period covered by the report. Nonetheless, in the first six months of 2015 Germany was the world’s biggest recipient of new asylum claims – 159,000, close to the entire total for all of 2014. The second largest recipient was the Russian Federation with 100,000 claims, mainly people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
