UNHCR’s latest Global Trends report highlights that at the end of 2015, global displacement reached a record high of 65.3 million people who have been forced to leave their homes, an increase of 4.8 million people since last year. Each year, UNHCR releases statistics on the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide, including refugees, internally displaced people, people seeking asylum and stateless people.

Global displacement reaches record high

There are now 21.3 million refugees worldwide, an increase in 1.7 million from 2014. This includes 16.1 million under UNHCR’s mandate and 5.2 million Palestinian refugees registered under UNWRA. Top countries of origin include:

• Syria at 4.9 million,
• Afghanistan at 2.7 million and
• Somalia at 1.1 million.

Collectively, people fleeing these three countries account for more than half of the world’s refugees under UNHCR’s mandate.

Distressingly, children made up an astonishing 51 per cent of the world’s refugees in 2015.

One in every 113 people globally is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refuge. To put this number in perspective, the number of people forcibly displaced is greater than the populations of Australia and New Zealand and Canada combined.

Despite a larger number of people being now displaced than following World War 2, the number constitutes just 0.3% of the global population.

Refugee Council of Australia post, 20 June 2016: http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/