FACTBOX-Refugee crisis escalates as wars drive record numbers to flee
LONDON, Sept 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - World leaders are gathering in New York on Monday for a major U.N. summit on tackling the refugee and migrant crisis.
Conflicts and persecution have driven a record 65.3 million people from their homes. Here are some facts:
- One in every 113 people globally is either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee.
- An average of 24 people worldwide were forced to flee every minute last year.
- At the end of 2015 there were 65.3 million forcibly displaced people. They included 21.3 million refugees, 40.8 million internally displaced and 3.2 million asylum seekers.
- If they were a country they would be the world's 21st largest.
- More than half of refugees come from just three countries: Syria (4.9 mln), Afghanistan (2.7 mln) and Somalia (1.1 mln).
- Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people (6.9 mln) followed by Syria (6.6 mln) and Iraq (4.4 mln).
- Developing regions host 86 percent of refugees. Turkey has by far the largest number at 2.5 million.
- Lebanon has the highest concentration relative to its own population with nearly one refugee for every five citizens.
- Nearly one in 200 children in the world is a refugee. The number of child refugees has more than doubled in the last decade.
- Growing numbers of children are crossing borders alone. Last year, more than 100,000 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in 78 countries - triple the number in 2014.
(Source: UNHCR and UNICEF) (Reporting buy Emma Batha. Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
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