100 million people forced to leave their homes in 2022: UN

United Nations: According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 100 million people across the world were forced to leave their homes in 2022. The agency said that it is continuing the help given to those in need.

Filippo Grandi, head of the agency, described the figure as "a record that should never have been set", Xinhua news agency reported, citing UN News.

The figure is up from some 90 million in 2021. Outbreaks of violence, or protracted conflicts, were key migration factors in many parts of the world, including Ukraine, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Syria and Myanmar.

Thousands of desperate migrants looked to Europe as a preferred destination, putting their lives in the hands of human traffickers, and setting off on perilous journeys across the Mediterranean, UN News warned.

It has now been more than seven years since the protracted conflict began in Yemen, which precipitated a humanitarian catastrophe and has forced more than 4.3 million people to leave their homes.

In Syria, war has now been upending lives for 11 years: nearly 5 million children born in Syria have never known the country at peace, UN News added.

More than 80,000 Syrians call the huge Za'atari camp in Jordan "home", and many of them may have to remain outside of their country for the foreseeable future.

"Prospects for return for the time being do not look promising," said Dominik Bartsch, UNHCR representative in the Jordanian capital Amman, in July. "We are not seeing an environment in Syria that would be conducive to returns."

Overall, Jordan hosts around 675,000 registered refugees from Syria, and most of them live in its towns and villages among local communities, with only 17 per cent living in the two main refugee camps, Za'atari and Azraq.

More than five years ago, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled their homes in Myanmar. Almost a million live in the vast Cox's Bazar camp across the border in neighboring Bangladesh.

UN refugee agency figures show that by December, more than 7.8 million Ukrainian refugees had been recorded across Europe.

In Ethiopia, millions remain displaced due to the armed conflict in the Tigray region, which began in November 2020. By the end of this year, a fragile internationally-brokered truce seemed to be holding with aid returning to embattled northern regions inaccessible for months, along with many returning home to rebuild their shattered lives.

According to UN News, refugees also found themselves under direct attack. In February, for example, thousands of Eritreans were forced to flee a camp in the Afar region, after armed men stormed in, stealing belongings and killing residents.

UNHCR said governments around the world had pledged some $1.13 billion, a record amount, to provide a lifeline to people displaced by war, violence, and human rights violations.

"Our world is facing a crisis of internal displacement. Record high numbers of people around the world have been displaced within their countries by tragedies such as conflict, disasters and the climate crisis," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in June, when the UN launched the Action Agenda on International Displacement.

"We all have a responsibility to act. The plight of internally displaced persons is more than a humanitarian issue. It takes an integrated approach, combining development, peace building, human rights, climate action and disaster risk reduction efforts," he said.

Source: IANS