A record 71 million people were displaced from their homes last year, UN says

A record 71million people were displaced from their homes because of war, persecution and violence last year, the UN has revealed. 

Venezuelans were the largest number of new asylum seekers, amid a spiralling political and economic crisis in the South American nation which has prompted at least 4milloin to flee the country. 

Syrian people remained the largest group of displaced people, according to the report which said that many refugees around the world had been displaced for several years.  

The annual Global Trends report said the worldwide total had increased by 2million since 2017, adding that the figures were 'conservative' and could be higher. 

If the 71million people were a country, it would be the 20th most populous nation in the world.  

A Venezuelan migrant (pictured) carries her son as she walked along the Pan-American Highway after crossing the Peru-Ecuador border last week

A Venezuelan migrant (pictured) carries her son as she walked along the Pan-American Highway after crossing the Peru-Ecuador border last week

Launching the report, UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi called it 'damaging' to depict migrants and refugees as threats to jobs and security, in a swipe at populist leaders such as President Donald Trump.  

On Monday Trump declared that U.S. immigration officials would begin rounding up and deporting illegal migrants as early as next week.  

'The global trends, once again unfortunately, go in what I would say is the wrong direction,' Grandi told reporters in Geneva. 

'There are new conflicts, new situations, producing refugees, adding themselves to the old ones. The old ones never get resolved.' 

The UN report also puts a statistical skeleton onto often-poignant individual stories of people struggling to survive by crossing rivers, deserts, seas, fences and other barriers, natural and man-made, to escape government oppression, gang killings, sexual abuse, militia murders and other such violence at home.

UNHCR said 70.8million people were forcibly displaced at the end of last year, up from about 68.5million in 2017 - and nearly a 65 per cent increase from a decade ago. 

Among them, nearly three in five people - or more than 41 million people - have been displaced within their home countries. 

The phenomenon is both growing in size and duration. Some four-fifths of the 'displacement situations' have lasted more than five years. 

After eight years of war in Syria, for instance, its people continue to make up the largest population of forcibly displaced people, at some 13million.

A crowd of Venezuelans await their turn at a Peruvian border post in Tumbes last week, as almost 6,000 migrants crossed into Peru in a two-day period

A crowd of Venezuelans await their turn at a Peruvian border post in Tumbes last week, as almost 6,000 migrants

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