BERLIN – The number of people forced to flee conflict, violence, human rights abuses and persecution has crossed the 100 million mark for the first time on record, due to the Ukraine war and other deadly conflicts, the UN refugee agency said Monday.
“It must act as a wake-up call to end the destructive conflict, the persecution and the underlying causes, and to force innocent people to flee their homes,” Grandi added.
The UNHCR estimates that the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide has reached 90 million by the end of 2021 due to new waves or protracted conflicts in countries including Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Congo.
Since then, the war in Ukraine has forced more than 6 million people to flee the country and another 8 million have been displaced within Ukraine.
The figure of 100 million represents more than 1% of the world’s population and includes refugees and asylum seekers, as well as internally displaced persons due to conflict – a statistic that the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center recently made 53.2 million – a statement from UNCHR said.
“The international response to the people fleeing the war in Ukraine has been overwhelmingly positive,” Grandi said. “Sympathy survives and we need the same solidarity for all crises around the world.”
However, Grandi noted that in the end, “humanitarian aid is a relief, not a cure.”
“To counteract this trend, the only answer is peace and stability so that innocent people are not forced to gamble between intense danger or uncertain flight and exile at home,” said Grandi.
