1% of humanity affected by forced displacement: UNHCR

Forced displacement is now affecting more than 1 per cent of humanity, or one in every 97 people, aa latest report from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) revealed on Thursday.

UNHCR's annual Global Trends report, published of the World Refugee Day marked yearly on June 20, showed that an unprecedented 79.5 million people were displaced as of the end of 2019, with 45.7 million among them people who had fled to other areas of their own countries, reports Xinhua news agency.

The rest were people displaced elsewhere, 4.2 million of whom being people awaiting the outcome of asylum requests, while 29.6 million were refugees and others forcibly displaced outside their country.

Last year, the UN agency reported a total of 70.8 million displaced people at the end of 2018.

According to the report, an estimated 30 to 34 million children are among the displaced, while at least 100 million people were forced to flee their homes in the past decade, with forced displacement almost doubling since 2010.

More than three quarters of the world's refugees are caught up in situations of long-term displacement, such as in Afghanistan, now in its fifth decade, the report said.

"We are witnessing a changed reality in that forced displacement nowadays is not only vastly more widespread but is simply no longer a short-term and temporary phenomenon," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.

"We need a fundamentally new and more accepting attitude towards all who flee, coupled with a much more determined drive to unlock conflicts that go on for years and that are at the root of such immense suffering."

( With inputs from IANS )