Spotlight: UN warns record high of over 65 mln people forced to flee their homes

With an unprecedented 65.3 million displaced people recorded globally last year, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) indicated Monday that one in every 113 people is now either an asylum seeker, an internally displaced person or a refugee.

"This is very bad news. This means that few people have been able to find solutions while a much bigger number of people have chosen exile," said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

Amid conflict, systemic violence and human rights violations, UNHCR's new Global Trends report shows that forced displacement dynamics are showing no signs of improving.

Factors threatening the lives of those forced to flee their homes are also multiplying, the high commissioner noted, a particularly worrying trend given that half of the world's refugees are children.

"At sea, a frightening number of refugees and migrants are dying each year. On land, people fleeing war are finding their way blocked by closed borders. Politics is gravitating against asylum in some countries," he explained.

In 2015 alone, some 12.4 million people were newly displaced as a result of conflict or persecution.

More than half were from three countries: Syria (4.9 million), Afghanistan (2.7 million) and Somalia (1.1 million).

Despite the attention given to the one million refugees and migrants who reached Europe last year, UNHCR indicated that 86 percent of refugees under its mandate were actually located in low and middle income countries in proximity to conflict areas.

"Refugees are a shared global responsibility, they cannot just be the responsibility of a few host countries and a few donor countries. There has to be a broader conscious, problems will come to all of you if you don't solve them," Grandi warned.

For the second consecutive year, Turkey was host to the largest refugee population in the world, with 2.5 million refugees recorded there at the end of 2015.

With only 201,400 individuals returning to their countries of origin last year, Grandi underscored the importance of cooperation to address the root causes behind record levels of forced displacement.

"The willingness of nations to work together not just for refugees but for the collective human interest is what's being tested today, and it's this spirit of unity that badly needs to prevail," he said. Endit