The number of asylum-seekers in industrialised countries rose by nearly half last year, driven by the devastating conflicts in Syria and Iraq, with Germany the top destination, the UN refugee agency said Thursday. In 2014, some 866,000 people applied for asylum in such countries, marking a 45-percent jump from a year earlier and a 22-year high, the UN refugee agency said. The surge is linked to the spiralling conflicts in Syria and Iraq, which have created "the worst humanitarian crisis of our era," spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters. As a sign of the crisis, the number of asylum applications last year was the second highest on record, coming very close to the all-time-high of the about 900,000 requests made in 1992, at the beginning of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNHCR said.
03-27-2015, 08:04 PM
Syria, Iraq conflicts send asylum-seeker numbers up 45%: UN
The number of asylum-seekers in industrialised countries rose by nearly half last year, driven by the devastating conflicts in Syria and Iraq, with Germany the top destination, the UN refugee agency said Thursday. In 2014, some 866,000 people applied for asylum in such countries, marking a 45-percent jump from a year earlier and a 22-year high, the UN refugee agency said. The surge is linked to the spiralling conflicts in Syria and Iraq, which have created "the worst humanitarian crisis of our era," spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters. As a sign of the crisis, the number of asylum applications last year was the second highest on record, coming very close to the all-time-high of the about 900,000 requests made in 1992, at the beginning of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNHCR said.
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