The U.N.’s refugee agency reports that the number of displaced people reached 65.3 million — or one out of every 113 people on Earth — in 2015.
A little under 1% of the earth’s population is either “an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee” according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in a report released Monday.
The total number of displaced people rose to 65.3 million by the end of 2015 — a 5.8 million increase on the year before.
The report offers three main reasons for the increase in the rate of forced displacements:
Long-term situations, such as the conflict in Afghanistan that cause large refugee outflows, are lasting longer; “dramatic new or reignited situations” such as the conflicts in Syria and South Sudan are occurring with a greater frequency; and “the rate at which solutions are being found for refugees and internally displaced people has been on a falling trend since the end of the Cold War.”
The report was released on World Refugee Day, which is observed by the agency annually to commemorate “the strength, courage and perseverance of millions of refugees.
This year, the UNHCR is urging people to sign a “#WithRefugees” petition, to be delivered to the U.N. headquarters in New York head of September’s General Assembly, asking governments to ensure every refugee child gets an education, that every refugee family has “somewhere safe to live,” and to ensure “every refugee can work or learn new skills to make a positive contribution to their community.”
