The United Nations' refugee agency warned Friday that the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes in 2015 is expected to far surpass 60 million for the first time, "meaning that one out every 122 persons on Earth has been forced to flee their homes."
By mid-2015, some 20.2 million refugees had fled wars and persecution, up from 19.5 million a year ago and the highest number since 1992. In the first six months of 2015, the number of refugees increased by 839,000, equivalent to 4,600 people being forced to leave their homes every day, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in its Mid-Year Trends 2015 report.
Asylum applications soared 78 percent over the same period in 2014, and nearly 2.5 million refugees currently have asylum requests pending, with the majority of new claims being filed with Germany, Russia and the United States. The number of internally displaced people also increased by about 2 million to an estimated 34 million worldwide.
UNHCR Commissioner António Guterres said that forced displacement "is now profoundly affecting our times. It touches the lives of millions of our fellow human beings — both those forced to flee and those who provide them with shelter and protection. Never has there been a greater need for tolerance, compassion and solidarity with people who have lost everything."
The UNHCR report does not include the hundreds of thousands of refugees who crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe over the past six months, nor the thousands of others seeking refuge from conflicts around the world, noted Voice of America.
The civil war in Syria that started in 2011 remains the "single biggest generator worldwide of both new refugees and continuing mass internal and external displacement," said the UNHCR, noting that more than 4.2 million Syrians had taken refuge abroad, compared to just 20,000 in 2010, while 7.6 million are internally displaced.
Turkey hosted the most refugees as of June 30, 1.84 million, but when based on a country's population size, Lebanon hosted more than any other country, with 209 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants.
