Refugee crisis escalates as wars drive record numbers to flee

World leaders are gathering in New York today for a major UN summit on tackling the refugee and migrant crisis. Conflicts and persecution have driven a record 65.3 million people from their homes. Here are some facts:

One in every 113 people globally is either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee. An average of 24 people worldwide were forced to flee every minute last year. At the end of 2015 there were 65.3 million forcibly displaced people. They included 21.3 million refugees, 40.8 million internally displaced and 3.2 million asylum seekers.

If they were a country they would be the world’s 21st largest. More than half of refugees come from just three countries:

Syria (4.9 mln), Afghanistan (2.7 mln) and Somalia (1.1 mln). Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people (6.9 mln) followed by Syria (6.6 mln) and Iraq (4.4 mln). Developing regions host 86 percent of refugees. Turkey has by far the largest number at 2.5 million. Lebanon has the highest concentration relative to its own population with nearly one refugee for every five citizens.

Nearly one in 200 children in the world is a refugee. The number of child refugees has more than doubled in the last decade. Growing numbers of children are crossing borders alone. Last year, more than 100,000 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in 78 countries - triple the number in 2014. —Reuters