Report: UNHCR Global Trends 2013 – War’s Human Cost
June 2013; 52 pages
Overview/Introduction Excerpts

By end-2013, 51.2 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. Some 16.7 million persons were refugees: 11.7 million under UNHCR’s mandate and 5.0 million Palestinian refugees registered by UNRWA. The global figure included 33.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and close to 1.2 million asylum-seekers. If these 51.2 million persons were a nation, they would make up the 26th largest in the world…

The year 2013 was marked by a continuation of multiple refugee crises, reaching levels unseen since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. As such, 2013 has been one of the most challenging years in UNHCR’s history. More than 2.5 million persons were forced to abandon their homes and seek protection outside the borders of their country, most of them in neighbouring countries. These new refugees joined the two million persons who had become refugees in 2011 and 2012. The war in the Syrian Arab Republic, entering into its third year in 2013, was the primary cause of these outflows, as highlighted by two dramatic milestones. In August, the one millionth Syrian refugee child was registered; only a few weeks later, UNHCR announced that the number of Syrian refugees had passed two million. The Syrian Arab Republic had moved from being the world’s second largest refugee-hosting country to being its second largest refugee-producing country – within a span of just five years.