Ahead of World Refugee Day, the United Nations refugee agency has revealed? that a record 800,000 people were forced to flee across borders last year, more than at any time since 2000.
The new refugees are part of a total of 4.3 million people who were newly displaced last year owing to a string of major humanitarian crises that began in late 2010 in Côte d’Ivoire, and followed by others in Libya, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere, according to Global Trends 2011, issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“2011 saw suffering on an epic scale. For so many lives to have been thrown into turmoil over so short a space of time means enormous personal cost for all who were affected,” said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, in a news release.
“We can be grateful only that the international system for protecting such people held firm for the most part and that borders stayed open. These are testing times,” he added.