Priredio: APC   foto: (Petros Giannakouris)

GENEVA, June 19th – In the annual report, the Global Trends of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) states that at the end of 2017, 68.5 million people were displaced worldwide, including 16.2 million people who had been displaced last year for the first time, or displaced again.

For the fifth consecutive year, wars, other forms of violence and persecution have led to a new rise in the number of internally displaced persons in the world in 2017, according to a UNHCR announcement.

New mass displacement of the population is due to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the war in South Sudan and the hundred of thousands of Rohind refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh, the statement said, adding that developing countries are the ones that are most affected by this situation.

An increase of 2.9 million displaced persons in relation to 2016 was recorded and represents the highest increase recorded by the UNHCR over one year.In the meantime, the number of asylum seekers, who are still waiting for a decision on their refugee status requests, increased by about 300,000 and on December 31, 2017, there were 3.1 million according to the statement.
The number of internally displaced people went from 40.3 million in 2016, down to 40 million in 2017.

More than a fifth of the total number of refugees are Palestinians, and the rest are of Syrian, Afghan, South Sudanese, Myanmar, and Somali descent.

“We are at a crossroads, where success in managing forcible displacement in the world requires a new and more comprehensive approach so that countries and communities will not be left to their own devices, ” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.