Numbers of Refugees at New Highs

On World Refugee Day this year, the U.N. highlighted the major refugee crises worldwide.

Syrian refugees walk around a refugee camp in Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border, on June 19, 2015. Ahead of World Refugee Day on Saturday, June 20, 2015, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated that a total of 11.6 million people from Syria had been displaced by the conflict by the end of last year, the largest such figure worldwide. Turkey is the world's biggest refugee host with 1.59 million refugees, according to the most recent U.N. figures. AP Photo/Emrah Gurel

On World Refugee Day this year (June 20), refugees worldwide (asylum seekers abroad plus internally displaced persons) for the first time in the post-World War II period exceeded 50 million people.

The Global Trends report of António Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), indicates that the increase was created mainly by the war in Syria, which by the end of 2014 had forced 2.5 million into fleeing abroad to seek asylum and caused another 6.5 million to be displaced within Syria.

If we can somehow imagine ourselves in the situations of displaced Syrian children and women, or the Christian or Yazidi women captured by ISIS, raped, beaten, and sold in markets as slaves, we can better understand their sufferings. Similar large victimization was also occurring in the Central African Republic and South Sudan in Africa.

We are seeing here the immense costs of not ending wars, of failing to resolve or prevent conflict ...

— António Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees