War, crises displaced 50m worldwide: UN
The number of people living as refugees from war or persecution exceeded 50 million in 2013, for the first time since World War II era, the UN refugee agency said yesterday.
Bangladesh had the ninth-highest number of refugees in relation to its national economy, said UNHCR in its report published in Geneva.
Pakistan has taken in the highest number of refugees in the world, which is 1.7 million.
The UNHCR annual global trends report, issued on the World Refugee Day, showed as many as 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2013, fully 6 million more than the 45.2 million reported in 2012.
Surprisingly, the report showed that half of the world's refugees in 2013 were children.
Bangladesh is one of the top 20 refugee hosting countries across the globe, the report said.
Currently there are 31,145 refugees from Myanmar registered in two official camps with an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 more unregistered living outside the camps.
In 2013, Bangladesh took up a strategy to list the undocumented Myanmar population, which the UNHCR described as a positive step towards recognising the existence of this population from Myanmar.
"If carried out in accordance with international standards, would be a positive step towards recognising the existence of this population," said the UNHCR.
To alleviate the stress and daily sufferings of registered refugees, the Bangladesh government has recently agreed to improve the shelter and living conditions in the refugee camps.
"We are happy that education in the camps is being extended to the secondary level," said Stina Ljungdell, UNHCR's representative in Bangladesh.
By region, Asia and the Pacific had the largest refugee population overall at 3.5 million people. Sub-Saharan Africa had 2.9 million people, while the Middle East and North Africa had 2.6 million.
Afghanistan is the leading country of origin for refugees. Around 2.9 million Afghans live in 71 countries as refugees. Most of them live in Pakistan or Iran.
In addition to refugees, the 2013 saw 1.1 million people submitting applications for asylum, the majority of these in developed countries. Germany became the largest single recipient of new asylum claims.
Syrians lodged 64,300 claims, more than any other nationality, while 60,400 came from conflict-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo.
They were followed by 57,400 people from Myanmar, where minority Rohingya have fled state-backed persecution and sectarian violence.
The report said the massive increase was driven mainly by the war in Syria, which at the end of last year had forced 2.5 million people into becoming refugees and made 6.5 million internally displaced.
Major new displacement was also seen in Africa, notably in Central African Republic and South Sudan.
"Peace is today dangerously in deficit. Humanitarians can help as a palliative, but political solutions are vitally needed. Without this, the alarming levels of conflict and the mass suffering that is reflected in these figures will continue," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
He called for international community to overcome its differences and find solutions to the conflicts of today in South Sudan, Syria, Central African Republic and elsewhere.
According to the report, the refugee numbers amounted to 16.7 million people worldwide.
Overall, the biggest refugee populations by source country are Afghans, Syrians and Somalis, together accounting for more than half of the global refugee total.
Pakistan, Iran and Lebanon, meanwhile, hosted more refugees than other countries.
The report noted internal displacement amounted to a record of 33.3 million people, accounting for the largest increase of any group in the global trends report.
It also pointed out, for UNHCR and other humanitarian organisations, helping these people represents a special challenge as many are in conflict zones.
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