GENEVA (AN) — The staggering number of people worldwide who were forced to flee their homes rose by 21% in just one year mainly due to fighting and violence in three countries.
The 108.4 million people who were forcibly displaced as of the end of 2022 showed a record increase of 19.1 million from the number a year earlier, the U.N. refugee agency reported on Wednesday.
That included refugees and others uprooted by persecution, conflict, violence, human rights abuses or climate-driven disasters and upheaval.
Some 52% of all refugees and others needing international protection fled Syria (6.5 million), Afghanistan and Ukraine (5.7 million each).
The war in Sudan this year triggered new outflows that pushed the global total to an estimated 110 million by May, said Filippo Grandi, head of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.
“These figures show us that some people are far too quick to rush to conflict and way too slow to find solutions," he said. "The consequence is devastation, displacement, and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes."
A failure of prevention
The numbers reflect people refugees who across a border and need international protection, displaced people who are forced or obliged to leave their homes, and asylum seekers who want international protection.
Every refugee begins as an asylum seeker, but not all asylum seekers are recognized as refugees.
As usual, the burden fell to mostly neighboring poor countries. The biggest hosts, measured on a per capita basis relative to their own populations, were Aruba, Lebanon, Curaçao, Jordan and Montenegro.
Some 70% of refugees and others in need of international protection were hosted in countries that shared borders with the places they fled from – and 76% were hosted in low- to middle-income countries.
"Every year, the world watches the number of displaced people increase and then does too little to protect and assist the displaced," said the Norwegian Refugee Council's Secretary General Jan Egeland, a veteran diplomat and humanitarian who has held multiple high-level U.N. posts.
"We are failing to prevent war and violence, and national and international leaderships fail in conflict resolution where we have protracted emergencies," he said. "This inability to protect civilians so they can stay safely in their homes cannot continue. We need re-energized peace diplomacy; we need donor countries to step up their financial support; we need those families on the frontlines to have their stories told on the front pages."
