UNITED NATIONS: The number of people forced to leave their homes because of wars and persecution swelled to almost 60 million from 51.2m the previous year, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Thursday.

The figures, collected by the UN agency for its research, Global Trends Report: World at War, suggest that one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.

If this were the population of a country, UNHCR added, it would be the world’s 24th largest.

“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,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said in a press release.

The international community is experiencing a dramatic shift in the situation facing the world’s refugees as a global surge in wars, conflict and persecution have caused a record number of people to flee their homes in search of safety, the UN official observed.

“It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace,” he added.

In an analysis exploring the range of conflicts that have given rise to the current displacement, the UNHCR report notes that over the past five years, at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited.

In Africa, the outburst of hostilities, many of which are sectarian in nature, have consumed eight countries _ Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and, more recently, Burundi.

In the Middle East, Syria, Iraq and Yemen remain ablaze while, in Europe, Ukraine has spawned a displacement crisis subsuming more than more than 1.3 million people.

In Asia, the unresolved tensions in Kyrgyzstan and in several areas of Myanmar and Pakistan, continue to force people across the countries’ borders.

The plethora of crises and conflicts, observes the UN study, has also provoked a dangerous and worsening trend in irregular migration as millions of refugees around the world are pushed into an uncomfortable and deadly dynamic with human traffickers and smugglers as they seek passage to safety.

STRIFE IN ASIA: Halfway around the world, the refugee situation in Asia is equally tragic, according to the UNHCR report.

In 2014, the number of internally displaced across the continent grew by 31 per cent to nine million people.

The ongoing plight of Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, as well as in Kachin and Shan regions, has similarly a maritime refugee crisis.

The alarming figures detailing the global refugee situation, and released by UNHCR on Wednesday, is ultimately compounded by the agency’s grim confirmation that over half of the world’s total refugees are children.

“With huge shortages of funding and wide gaps in the global regime for protecting victims of war, people in need of compassion, aid and refuge are being abandoned,” Mr. Guterres continued.

“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.”

Published in Dawn June 19th, 2015

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