The United Nations warned Monday that Russia's war in Ukraine has caused the number of forcibly displaced people around the world to rise to more than 100 million for the first time ever.
The number of people forced to flee conflict, violence, human rights abuses and persecution has now exceeded the staggering 100 million, for the first time ever, driven by the war in Ukraine and other deadly conflicts, UNHCR said in a statement.
The Commission considered - in a statement - that this "alarming" figure should shake the world and push it towards ending the conflicts that are forcing record numbers of people to flee their homes.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) indicated that the number of forcibly displaced people rose to 90 million by the end of 2021, driven by violence in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Russia entered Ukraine on February 24.
Since then, more than 8 million people have been displaced within the country, while more than 6 million refugees have fled across the border.
The Russian war has displaced 8 million Ukrainians (Reuters)
worry and warning
"100 million is a stark, alarming and thought-provoking number. It is a number that should never have been reached," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
He warned that this figure "should serve as a wake-up call to resolve and prevent devastating conflicts, end persecution, and address the underlying causes that force innocent people to flee their homes."
This number includes refugees and asylum seekers and more than 50 million people displaced within their own countries.
"The international response to people fleeing the war in Ukraine is very positive," Grandi noted, adding that "this rush of sympathy is very real, and there is a need for similar mobilization with regard to all other crises in the world."
Displaced Ethiopians fleeing armed conflict (Reuters)
Reply and criticize
Grandi stressed that "humanitarian assistance is only a palliative, not a cure," explaining that "in order to reverse the trend, the only response is peace and stability so that innocents will no longer have to choose between the immediate danger of conflict and the difficulty of escape and exile."
Last Friday, Grandi criticized about 20 countries that, in the name of health security, continue to close their borders to asylum seekers more than two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He suspects that these countries are using the order as an excuse not to reopen their borders.
A report issued by two NGOs published on May 19 showed that there were nearly 60 million internally displaced people worldwide last year, many of them due to natural disasters.
And the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said that the situation in the world "has never been this bad", adding that "the world is collapsing."