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REFUGEE numbers reached a global record of 38 million last year, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) reported yesterday.
The NRC’s internal displacement monitoring centre said that 11 million people had been newly displaced in 2014, mostly due to conflicts in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo — a rate of 30,000 a day.
The worldwide total of 38 million marked a 4.7 million increase on 2013.
“These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signalling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians,” said NRC secretary-general Jan Egeland.
Iraq was hardest hit in terms of new refugees, with 2.2 million driven from their homes by the war between Islamic State (Isis) and the government.
But in Syria, where Isis has waged a brutal war against the government for five years, 7.6 million people — 35 per cent of the population — remain internally displaced, up by 1.1 million on 2013.The statistics were endorsed by the UN refugee agency.
