GENEVA, June 19: Violence in Iraq is the main driver behind a significant rise in the global refugee population to nearly 10 million people by the end of last year, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

“By the end of 2006, there were an estimated 9.9 million refugees globally. For the first time since 2002, a declining trend in the global figures was reversed,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in its 2006 Global Trends report.

The number of refugees rose by 1.2 million or 14 per cent last year — equal to the 1.2 million Iraqis who sought refuge in neighbouring Jordan and Syria over the same period.

A further 300,000 Iraqis fled to other countries, and the total — 1.5 million — represents a more than fivefold increase over the year, the UNHCR said.

Iraqis thus form the second largest contingent of refugees, behind 2.1 million refugees from Afghanistan, the UNHCR report said.

UNHCR figures do not include some 4.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territories, who fall under the mandate of the separate agency, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The UNHCR also concerns itself with other “persons of concern,” such as those who are stateless, returnees and internally displaced.

Taken as a whole, there were 32.9 million such people recorded in 2006, marking a “significant increase” of 56 per cent on the year before, with the single largest increase occurring among internally displaced persons.

—AFP