Human Wrongs Watch
World Refugee Day is being marked by yet another sombre milestone in a year that has seen crisis after crisis force desperate people to flee their homes ahead of bullets and bombs: a new UN report reveals that the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people.*
Photos: UNHCR/S. Sisosmack (background), UNHCR/O.Pain (1st), UNHCR/J. Tanner (2nd), UNHCR/S. Rich (3rd), UNHCR/F. Noy (4th)
The annual global trends report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), states that even as the war in Syria continued to grind on – driving 9 million people from their homes by the end of last year – millions of individuals were forcibly displaced in other parts of the world, notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Mali, and the border area between South Sudan and Sudan.
By the end of 2013, an estimated 51.2 million people worldwide were considered to be forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations.
