The UNCHR reported that millions of people around the world held a series of events aimed at honouring “the courage and resilience of those who have been forced to flee their homes to reach safety.”
The refugee agency also released its ‘Global Trends’ report on World Refugee Day where it pointed out that conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and South Sudan has triggered a crisis that has produced over 21 million refugees, half of whom they estimate are children.
A total of 65.3 million people were either forced to seek asylum due to conflict, made refugees or displaced within the borders of their own country.
Developing countries, such as Pakistan and Turkey, host the majority of the world’s refugee population, the report says.
On World Refugee Day the UNHCR’s Filippo Grandi decried what he called the “rise of xenophobia” which he says is “becoming a very defining feature of the environment in which we work.”
“Barriers are rising everywhere – and I’m not just talking of walls. But I’m talking about legislative barriers that are coming up, including in countries in the industrialized world that have been for a long time bastions of principle in defending the fundamental rights linked to asylum,” he added.
An estimated 2 million people sought asylum in industrialized countries last year – 100,000 of whom were children who had been separated from their families.
The UN also estimated that conflicts and crises in the world has seen 125 million people in need of basic humanitarian assistance.
The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien pointed out last May that this 125 million figure constitutes “the 11th largest country in the world, but they don’t have a flag, they don’t have a head of state.”
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq is also home to an estimated 1.8 refugees and internally displaced from Iraq and Syria.
from Rudaw http://ift.tt/28ItaQ4
via Defense News
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