UNHCR records 100m refugees, highest since World War II

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)  has counted 100 million people worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes.

The figure  is the highest number of displaced people recorded since World War II.

The UN body said in its Global Trends Report on Thursday that displacement of civilians from Ukraine was the largest and fastest-growing refugee crisis since the UNHCR was established in 1951.

The Geneva-based UNHCR said that Russian invasion of Ukraine was among the multiple simultaneous emergencies, alongside that in Afghanistan.

Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said that numbers had climbed every year in the last decade.

The number has been rising for years, with more than double the number of people fleeing their homes in late 2021 compared to 10 years earlier.