Africa Focus: Sub-Saharan Africa records 4.5 mln newly displaced persons in 2014: UNHCR

Sub-Saharan Africa had 3.7 million refugees, and 11.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), 4. 5 million of whom were newly displaced in 2014, the UN refugee agency said.

According to the 2014 report from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) received Friday, the refugees were primarily from Somalia (753,000), Sudan (627,000), South Sudan (615,300), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (487,800), the Central African Republic (410,400), and Eritrea (239,600).

The figures, collected by the UN agency for its latest Global Trends: World at War, show 17 percent overall increase in the number of refugees excludes Nigeria, while Ethiopia replaced Kenya as the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa and the 5th largest worldwide.

"We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before, " UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement to mark the report's release.

According to the report, often-overlooked, Africa's numerous conflicts, including in Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, together produced immense forced displacement totals in 2014, on a scale only marginally lower than in the Middle East.

Globally, the number of people forcibly displaced during the reporting year swelled to a staggering 59.5 million people compared to the 51.2 million from the previous year.

The report suggests that one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.

"With huge shortages of funding and wide gaps in the global regime for protecting victims of war, people in need of compassion, aid and refuge are being abandoned," Guterres said.

"For an age of unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented humanitarian response and a renewed global commitment to tolerance and protection for people fleeing conflict and persecution," he added.

According to the report, South Sudan was a home to 248,142 refugees in 2014, originating from Sudan (225,727), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (15,485), Central African Republic (2,040) and Ethiopia (2,392).

The Sudanese are mainly found in Unity and Upper Nile State, while the Congolese, Ethiopians, and refugees from Central African Republic are mainly in Central and Western Equatoria, with some Ethiopians living in Jonglei State.

However, the outbreak of violence in South Sudan, which started in December 2013, led to the new internal displacement of 1.5 million persons. Despite the return of some 200,000 IDPs during the year, the number of IDPs at the end of 2014 was estimated at 1. 5 million, including some individuals who were displaced earlier.

The report notes that the outbreak of violence in South Sudan triggered a major outflow into neighboring countries. The overall number of South Sudanese refugees grew from 114,400 to 616,200 within a span of just 12 months.

By the end of 2014, those fleeing South Sudan had found refuge predominantly in Ethiopia (251,800), Uganda (157,100), Sudan (115, 500), and Kenya (89,200).

As a result, South Sudan was the fifth largest source country of refugees worldwide, says the report.

The plethora of crises and conflicts, observes the UN study, has also provoked a dangerous and worsening trend in irregular migration as millions of refugees around the world are pushed into an uncomfortable and deadly dynamic with human traffickers and smugglers as they seek passage to safety.

Sea crossings from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe have surged with the most recent official figures showing that as of June 8, a total of 103,000 refugees and migrants had arrived in Europe. Endi