Record 60 million forced to flee war, violence: UN

The number of people forced to flee war, violence and persecution has soared to a record 60 million, half of them children, the United Nations said Thursday, warning that the situation has become a situation of extreme urgency. The huge tide of displaced people has grown by 8.3 million since 2013 — the highest-ever increase in a single year, the UN refugee agency said in a report titled “World at War." The situation is "getting out of control simply because the world seems to be at war,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres told reporters before the launch of the annual report.

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.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres

The number of displaced stood at 59.5 million worldwide at the end of 2014, “as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations,” the report said. More than half of the world’s refugees are children, up from 41 percent in 2009, while the total number of people who have fled their homes has spiked by 40 percent in just three years. If the world’s displaced people were lumped together as a nation, it would be the 24th largest, with a population similar to Italy’s.

World displaced un