Number Of Global Refugees Hits Record High

The Government of Uganda, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP and other humanitarian partners on the ground are working tirelessly to respond to the more than 740,000 refugees who have arrived in Uganda since July 2016.

Grandi said that the European Union had sent very little money to United Nations institutions to support the refugees in Turkey, which, he said "has spent a serious amount of money" so far in order to meet the needs of those staying at camps, and others including educational and health needs.

They house some of the 18 million displaced people in Africa. A full 84 percent of refugees are living in low- and middle-income countries, the UNHCR said, blaming this "huge imbalance" on "the continuing lack of consensus internationally when it comes to refugee hosting and the proximity of many poor countries to regions of conflict".

The Global Trends report is based on the UNHCR's own data, data it receives from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and data received from governments. The total "means that on average, one in every 113 people worldwide is today someone who is displaced", said Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.

Second is displacement of people inside their own countries, whose numbers were 40.3 million at the end of 2016 compared to 40.8 million a year earlier. Of that figure, one in every three people, roughly 4.9 million people, were hosted by the least developed countries. South Sudan, with a little over a quarter, has the next-biggest proportion - and fastest growing displaced population overall, the agency said.

On June 22-23, Uganda will host the solidarity summit on refugees, jointly organized with the UN Refugee Agency, mainly to raise more cash to manage the crisis. By the end of 2016, Uganda had the fifth-largest refugee population after Turkey (2.9 million), Pakistan (1.4 million), Lebanon (1million) and Islamic Republic of Iran (979,400).

The report also supplied data on host countries, revealing that Turkey hosted the most refugees in 2016, with almost three million fleeing to Turkey for safety.

World Refugee Day marks the awareness on people to encourage and protect the refugees around the world.

Meanwhile, the total number seeking asylum globally was 2.8 million, about 400,000 fewer than in the previous year. The UNHCR also said that 75,000 asylum applications were made by children, mostly from Afghanistan or Syria, who were traveling alone or had been separated from their families, although this figure is probably an underestimate, the organization says. In total, 189,300 refugees were accepted for resettlement by 37 different countries. "So once people spent so many years in displacement away from their country, it is always hard for them to restart their life upon return". That also sounds like progress until you consider that most (384,000) returned to Afghanistan under severe pressure from reluctant host countries, Pakistan and Iran.

In 2016 the leading global agency for refugees provided emergency equipment to refugees and other displaced and stateless people including 256,000 tents, 804,000 solar lanterns, 1.2 million mosquito nets, 3.4 million plastic sheets and 6.6 million blankets.