GENEVA: The number of people displaced by war and violence is set to hit a record high this year, the UN said on Friday, warning that one in every 122 people had been forced to flee home.

The UN refugee agency released a report showing rocketing numbers of people living as refugees, asylum seekers or displaced within their countries during the first half of this year, and indicated that the full-year figures would be devastating.

“We’re talking only about the first six months. We believe things will be much worse in the second six months,” UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres told reporters in Geneva.

Nearly one million migrants and refugees have made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe this year, sparking the continent’s biggest migration crisis since World War II.

At the same time, conflicts raging in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere are continuing “to generate staggering levels of human suffering”, UNHCR said in a statement, warning that “2015 is likely to exceed all previous records for global forced displacement”.

Last year, the number of displaced soared to a record 59.5 million worldwide, and Friday’s report indicated that this year the figure “has far surpassed 60m”.

That means that one in every 122 people on the planet is today someone who has been forced to flee home, the agency pointed out.

Dangerous escalation

Mr Guterres lamented that there had been “a dramatic escalation” in the number of people displaced by conflict since he took the helm of UNHCR a decade ago.

While 11,000 people were displaced each day by conflict in 2010, the number had soared to 42,500 per day by 2014, and is expected to grow further this year, he said.

“This escalation is staggering,” he said. “Never has there been a greater need for tolerance, compassion and solidarity with people who have lost everything.”

During the first six months of the year, at least 5m people were newly displaced, including 839,000 who crossed borders — the equivalent of 4,600 people becoming refugees every single day, the report said.

By the end of June, 20.2m people were living as refugees worldwide, marking a 45-per cent jump since 2011.

The main contributor is the ruthless conflict in Syria, which by June this year had created 4.2m refugees, UNHCR said.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2015