A report by United Nations agency has confirmed the Syrian crisis as the world’s single largest refugee crisis. More than four million Syrians who constitute a sixth of the population, have fled to neighboring countries to escape the conflict in their country.
The number of refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria has now crossed four million making it as a one of the biggest refugee crisis resulting from a single conflict in nearly a quarter of a century. This has steered increasing number of people crossing into Turkey by one million in just 10 months. This trend started after the uprising in March 2011 in Syria which has resulted in the death of more than 230,000 people and displaced more than seven million people so far. The head of the UN’s refugee agency, Antonio Guterres, has termed this terrible situation as a worst humanitarian crisis of the generation.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has disclosed the number of refuges that has fled to the neighboring countries. According to the report, Turkey is home to the around 1.8 million Syrians refugees; another 1.2 million people have fled to Lebanon and 629,000 to Jordan and live in sub-standard shelters. In addition to this, about 270,000 Syrians have sought asylum in Europe. These refugees are risking their lives by taking perilous boat crossing to Europe and around 137,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean in the first half of 2015.
The report has further added that if the Syrians continued to flee at the same pace it expected the number of refugees in neighbouring countries to reach 4.27 million by the end of 2015.
