Three million Syria refugees flee conflict – UN
The number of refugees from the Syrian civil war rises above 3 million, the United Nations refugee agency says.
The record figure is 1 million refugees more than a year ago, while a further 6.5 million are displaced within Syria, meaning that “almost half of all Syrians have now been forced to abandon their homes and flee for their lives“, it said.
“The Syrian crisis has become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world is failing to meet the needs of refugees and the countries hosting them,” Antonio Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, said in a statement.
NEW RELEASE: Highest concentrations of Syrian refugees:
Lebanon (1.14 million)
Turkey (815,000)
Jordan (608,000) pic.twitter.com/UBB1F0ONlc
— UNHCRNews (@RefugeesMedia) August 29, 2014
The vast majority remain in neighbouring countries, with the highest concentrations in Lebanon (1.14 million), Turkey (815,000) and Jordan (608,000), the UNHCR said.
Some 215,000 refugees are in Iraq with the rest in Egypt and other countries.
‘Exhausted and scared’
In addition, the host governments estimate that hundreds of thousands more Syrians have sought sanctuary in their countries without formally registering, the agency said.
Increasing numbers of families arrive in a shocking state, exhausted, scared and with their savings depleted, it said.
As Syrian refugees pass 3mill., “biggest crisis of our era” @jonsnowC4 talks to Navi Pillay in her last UK interview pic.twitter.com/8sKLHVxtML
— bendepear (@bendepear) August 29, 2014
“Most have been on the run for a year or more, fleeing from village to village before taking the final decision to leave.”
“There are worrying signs too that the journey out of Syria is becoming tougher, with many people forced to pay bribes at armed checkpoints proliferating along the borders.
‘Desperate situation’
Syrians now constitute the world’s largest refugee population under the care of the UNHCR, second only in number to refugees in the decades-old Palestinian crisis that falls under the mandate of a separate UN agency, UNRWA, it said.
A recent upsurge in fighting appears to be worsening an already desperate situation, the statement said.
More than 191,000 people were killed in the first three years of Syria’s civil war, a UN report said last week in what UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called a “wholly avoidable human catastrophe”.