The world’s displaced people hits 65 million

OTTAWA— The United Nations’ refugee agency says one in every 113 people around the world is either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee.

The agency says by the end of last year, 65.3 million people had been forcibly displaced from their homes, nearly twice the population of Canada.

The number easily set a new postwar record, as the UN agency warned that European and other rich nations can expect the tide to continue if root causes aren’t addressed.

“If these 65.3 million persons were anation, they would make up the 21st largest in the world,” the agency said.

But few of those displaced find new permanent homes around the world.

And the number of those who eventually receive citizenship in their new countries is vanishingly small: More refugees became citizens of Canada than any other country last year, with 25,900 granted citizenship, but that represents the vast majority of a relatively tiny number of naturalizations recorded worldwide, the agency reported.

The sobering statistics were contained in the agency’s annual global trends report, released Monday to mark World Refugee Day.

Of the world’s displaced people, about 12.4 million were newly uprooted, due to ongoing persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations that continue to plague countries around the world.

In 2015, more than a million people reached Europe, fleeing conflict and persecution in places such as Syria, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Canada has consistently been among the lead nations in resettling refugees, with the Liberals’ Syrian program helping raise those numbers in 2015.