As number of people driven from home exceeds 60 million for first time, UN refugee agency sounds alarm over failure of nations to find collective solutions

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A record 65 million men, women and children were forced from their homes by war and persecution last year, leaving one in every 113 people a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum at the end of 2015, according to the UN.

The latest annual global trends study from the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, shows that the total number of forcibly displaced people rose sharply last year, increasing from 59.5 million in December 2014 to 65.3 million in December 2015.

With 24 people being displaced every minute and the threshold of 60 million crossed for the first time, the number of forcibly displaced people across the world is now greater than the entire population of the UK. Were the 65.3 million to be counted as the population of a single country, it would be the 21st largest in the world.

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Although the total includes 21.3 million refugees and 3.2 million people awaiting asylum decisions, the overwhelming majority of the displaced – 40.8 million – are exiled from their homes within the borders of their own countries.



The UNHCR said the figures had increased by more than 50% over the past five years as levels of displacement reached their highest since the aftermath of the second world war. The organisation added that it knew of no precedent for the level of risk posed by displacement on such a massive scale.

While forced displacement has been a growing phenomenon in most regions for the past 20 years, the agency says three factors are driving the current increase in numbers. Conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Somalia are lasting longer, fresh or familiar violence is breaking out or re-erupting frequently in countries such as South Sudan, Burundi, Yemen, Central African Republic and Ukraine, and the world is taking longer to figure out what to do with displaced people.

Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said the world was not doing enough to tackle a crisis with no end in sight.

“More people are being displaced by war and persecution – and that’s worrying in itself – but the factors that endanger refugees are multiplying too,” he said.

“At sea, a frightening number of refugees and migrants are dying each year; on land, people fleeing war are finding their way blocked by closed borders.”

And yet, said Grandi, politics in some countries was “gravitating against” asylum.

He added: “The willingness of nations to work together not just for refugees but for the collective human interest is what’s being tested today, and it’s this spirit of unity that badly needs to prevail.”



Conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa remained the greatest cause of displacement last year. Syria’s war left 4.9 million people living as refugees and a further 6.6 million internally displaced. In Iraq, conflict displaced 4.4 million people internally and created more than a quarter of a million refugees. Yemen’s civil war, which began in March last year, has internally displaced 2.5 million people, while violence in Libya forced nearly half a million people to flee their homes.



More than half the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate are from just three countries: Syria (4.9 million), Afghanistan (2.7 million) and Somalia (1.1 million). A further 5.2 million Palestinian refugees are registered with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.



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According to the UNHCR figures, Colombia, which has suffered decades of conflict, remains the country with the highest number of internally displaced people (6.9 million). Behind it are Syria (6.6 million) and Iraq (4.4 million).

The violence in Yemen brought about more new internal displacement than any other conflict in 2015, with almost 10% of its population forced into internal exile.

The report also notes that, although Europe is struggling to cope with the arrival of more than 1 million refugees and migrants, the continent’s struggles are dwarfed by the challenge facing countries closer to the wars fuelling the crisis.

Eighty-six percent of the refugees under the UNHCR’s mandate last year – or 13.9 million people – were in low- and middle-income countries close to conflict situations.

Turkey was once again the world’s biggest host country last year, taking in 2.5 million refugees, most of them from Syria. Pakistan was next with 1.6 million people, while Lebanon hosted more refugees compared with its population than any other country: 1.1 million people – or 183 refugees for every 1,000 inhabitants. Next came Iran (979,400), Ethiopia (736,100), Jordan (664,100), Kenya (553,912), Uganda (477,187), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (383,100) and Chad (369,540).