Nearly 60 million people have been driven from their homes by war and persecution, an unprecedented global exodus that has burdened fragile countries with waves of newcomers and littered deserts and seas with the bodies of those who died trying to reach safety.
Nearly 14 million people were newly displaced in 2014, according to the annual report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The leader in Europe is Ukraine (1,1 m).
Meanwhile, Hungary announced plans on Wednesday to build a four-meter-high fence along its border with Serbia to stem the flow of illegal migrants, a move that triggered a swift rebuke from the United Nations Refugee Agency. Most illegal migrants arrive to Hungary from Serbia. In turn, Serbia receives majority of illegal immigrants from Bulgaria, which is an EU member, or from Macedonia, which is not.
Bulgaria has built its own fence along a section of its 240-kilometer border with Turkey with the same aim of keeping out migrants and it has plans to extend it.
The International Organization for Migration said on Wednesday that it had found the remains of more than two dozen people, mostly West Africans, who apparently got lost in a sandstorm in Niger and then died of heat and thirst near the border with Algeria.
“For an age of unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented humanitarian response and a renewed global commitment to tolerance and protection for people fleeing conflict and persecution,” António Guterres, the high commissioner for refugees, said in a statement accompanying the annual report.
Amnesty International, in a report issued this week, accused governments and smugglers alike of pursuing “selfish political interests instead of showing basic human compassion.”
Sources - Reuters, New York Times, IOM and Amnesty International
