UNITED NATIONS. June 1: The number of displaced people worldwide will increase significantly over the next 10 years due to conflict, natural disasters and climate change, the United Nations refugee agency said in a report launched on Thursday. It called for international solidarity to address the issue.

“The world is creating displacement faster than it is producing solutions, and this means one thing only: More people trapped in exile over many years, unable to return home, to settle locally, or to move elsewhere,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres said.

“Global displacement is an inherently international problem, and as such needs international solutions – and by this I mainly mean political solutions,” he added.

The latest refugee report since 2006, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees —The State of World Refugees — provides a fresh, in-depth analysis of the plight of the world's millions of displaced people.

The 2012 publication notes that there are currently 43 million people who have been forced to flee their homes due to a combination of causes.

These include conflict, climate change, population growth, urbanisation, food insecurity, water scarcity and resource competition. Eighty per cent of the 43 million live in the developing world.

Among the notable changes in global displacement since 2006, the new publication notes the increase in the number of internally displaced persons which now amount to 26 million, more than half of the world’s displaced population. In comparison, around 15-16 million of the displaced persons are refugees and a further million are asylum-seekers.

The publication points out that more people are displaced annually by natural disasters than by conflict and warns of a gap in international protection when it comes to people who flee across borders to escape the impact of climate change or natural disasters as they are not recognised as refugees under international law.