Conflict, persecution and violence newly uprooted at least 3.2 million people in the first half of last year, and low- and middle-income countries played the greatest role in sheltering the world’s displaced, a new report by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has found. Source: UNHCR Mid-Year Trends 2016
While the numbers of newly displaced were one third lower than during the same period in 2015, when 5 million people were newly displaced, the global total continued to rise. Prospects for displaced people to return to their homes remained slim while conflicts intensified.
More than half the new refugees in the first half of 2016 fled Syria’s conflict, with most staying in the immediate region – Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Other sizable groups fled Iraq, Burundi, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.
While smaller in scale than the Syrian crisis, South Sudan’s refugee situation continues to grow and affect some of the world’s least developed countries – including Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, DRC, CAR, and Ethiopia. At mid-2016, there were a total of 854,200 refugees from South Sudan, a more than eight-fold increase in three years. Numbers grew even further in the second half of 2016. Source: UNHCR Mid-Year Trends 2016
Of all countries, Turkey sheltered the greatest number of refugees, hosting 2.8 million by mid-2016. It was followed by Pakistan (1.6 million), Lebanon (1 million), Iran (978,000), Ethiopia (742,700), Jordan (691,800), Kenya (523,500), Uganda (512,600), Germany (478,600) and Chad (386,100).
In the first half of last year, 1.7 million people were newly displaced within their own country, while 1.5 million had crossed an international border, UNHCR’s Mid-Year Trends 2016 report shows.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
