More than 50m displaced by unrest

More than 50 million people were forcibly uprooted worldwide at the end of last year, the highest level since after the Second World War, as people fled crises from Syria to South Sudan, the UN refugee agency said.

Half are children, many of them caught up in conflicts or persecution that world powers have been unable to prevent or end, UNHCR said in its annual Global Trends report.

“We are really facing a quantum leap, an enormous increase of forced displacement in our world,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told a news briefing.