U.N.: Ukraine war pushes global displaced to record high

Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed global displacement figures to record levels, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday, calling the statistics a “tragic milestone.”

Over the past decade, levels of displacement have increased every year, the U.N. noted in its global trends report — with figures currently at the highest level since record keeping began. At the end of 2021, 89.3 million people were displaced, the agency said, citing war, disasters, violence, persecution and human rights abuses as some of the factors.

As of today, more than 100 million people have been forced to flee their homes — more than 1% of humanity.

The invasion of Ukraine triggered the fastest forced displacement crisis since World War II — which, in conjunction with other emergency situations in Afghanistan, Africa, and elsewhere, “pushed the figure over the dramatic milestone,” the agency said. Over 5 million Ukrainian refugees have been recorded across Europe since Russia’s invasion.

Children make up almost half of the total global refugee population of the last decade, said UNICEF in a separate report Thursday. A record 36.5 million children were displaced by the end of 2021 amid cascading crises, including in Afghanistan, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Climbing trends of global displacement will continue unless the international community makes a “new, concerted push towards peacemaking,” the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.

Last year, several conflicts began around the world, and existing ones escalated — with about two dozen nations, home to a total of 850 million people, experiencing medium- or high-intensity conflicts, according to the World Bank. “Fragility, conflict-related fatalities, and social unrest have increased dramatically,” World Bank Group President David Malpass said in March.

On top of conflict, food scarcity, inflation and the climate crisis have exacerbated hardship and stretched the humanitarian response, the U.N. noted.