- By BARBARA SURK and
JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press
BEIRUT — For the first time since World War II,
the number of people forced from their homes
worldwide has surged past 50 million, the United
Nations refugee agency said Friday.
Syrians fleeing the devastating civil war and a
fast-growing web of other world crises accounted
for the spike in the displaced, the UNHCR said in
its annual Global Trends Report.
At the end of last year, 51.2 million people had
been forced from their homes worldwide, the
highest figure of displacement since World War II,
said the UNHCR.
That's six million more people than at the end of
the previous year, reflecting a collective failure to
resolve longstanding conflicts or prevent the
eruption of new ones, the head of the U.N.
refugee agency said in announcing the report.
"The world has shown a limited capacity to
prevent conflicts and to find a timely solution for
them," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
Antonio Guterres.
"Today, we not only have an absence of a global
governance system, but we have sort of an
unclear sense of power in the world," Guterres
told reporters in the Lebanese capital of Beirut,
where the global report was launched Friday.
The latest figures do not include the half million
people believed to have fled violence in Iraq over
the past week.
The massive increase was mainly driven by
Syria's civil war. By the end of last year, 2.5
million Syrians had become refugees in
neighboring countries and more than 6.5 million
had been displaced within Syria, the U.N. agency
said.
The daunting numbers — which are straining the
resources of host countries and aid organizations
alike — also are a stark reflection of the ongoing
conflicts and persecution in other countries,
including the Central African Republic and South
Sudan.
"These numbers represent a quantum leap in
forced displacement around the world," Guterres
said. "For the first time since the second world
war, we had in 2013 more than 50 million people
displaced by conflict and persecution either
crossing borders or within the borders of their
countries."
Aid agencies have struggled to keep pace with
worsening conflicts in Syria, the Central African
Republic and South Sudan, and on Friday the
World Food Program, a U.N. agency, said it was
forced to cut rations to refugees in several
countries.
"We are being squeezed, other U.N. agencies are
increasingly squeezed, NGOs are squeezed,"
spokesman Peter Smerdon told The Associated
Press.
"This means that ultimately the poor, the most
vulnerable, the innocent civilians who have
escaped conflicts with their lives and reached
refuge in a country which is at peace, they will
suffer because their assistance cannot be
delivered."
The over-50-million number includes refugees and
asylum-seekers who fled abroad as well as
people displaced within their own countries. The
data was compiled from government, non-
government partner organizations and UNHCR's
own records.
Of 51.2 million displaced worldwide last year,
16.7 million were refugees outside their countries'
borders. More than half of the refugees under
UNHCR's care — 6.3 million — had been in exile
for more than five years, the agency said.
By country, the biggest refugee populations were
Afghan, Syrian and Somali, the report said. The
countries hosting the largest number of refugees
were Pakistan, Iran and Lebanon, which is bitterly
divided over the war in neighboring Syria and has
seen several deadly attacks linked to the conflict.
More than a million Syrians have registered in
Lebanon as refugees since the conflict in their
country started in March 2011. The refugees now
make up nearly one fourth of Lebanon's
population of 4.5 million.
———
Heilprin reported from Geneva.
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