World Refugee Day: Honoring those who had to flee

Absolutely exhausted, this displaced child rests in the north of the Gaza Strip. By the end of April, 122.1 million people worldwide were fleeing war, hunger and violence. That's just over 2 million more than last year, according to a UNHCR's annual Global Trends Report.

In 2024, 50 million children worldwide were on the run. The experience not only robs them of their childhood but also future prospects. Children who have fled are often unable to go to school, are forced to work or become victims of human trafficking.

A bloody civil war has been raging in Sudan for two years. The fighting has triggered one of the biggest crises in the world, with 14.3 million people displaced inside the country and around 4 million having fled abroad.

Since March 2024, around 1.7 million Afghan refugees have been forced to leave neighboring Pakistan, where many sought protection after the extremist Taliban group returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021. Those who fled abroad are now being deported back home. Women and girls in particular are in danger and will have to deal with the Taliban's extreme gender-based repression.

Myanmar's military junta took brutal action against the Rohingya people in 2017. Soldiers burned down villages, murdered, raped and tortured thousands of people. Around 750,000 members of the Muslim minority fled to neighboring Bangladesh, where this camp, among others, was set up. In Bangladesh, the Rohingya are considered stateless, illegal immigrants.

Around 8.8 million Ukrainians were forced to flee after Russia invaded their country in early 2022. "The world is falling apart," Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said of the new global displacement figures. "The failure of global diplomacy and of conflict resolution efforts — and more than anything the failure to protect civilians — is astounding."

At the end of January, the M23 militia took over parts of the resource-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The militia has killed, tortured and forcibly recruited civilians. There are now 6.9 million internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on top of around half a million refugees from elsewhere in the region.

Wealthy northern countries are increasingly sealing themselves off to irregular migration, such as this group of refugees trying to get to France. The UNHCR has said low- and middle-income countries host 73% of the world's refugees and other people in need of international protection.

People celebrated the fall of the autocratic Assad regime in Syria in December 2024. The country had been through a 14-year civil war and millions fled. Now the UNHCR estimates that more than 2 million Syrians have returned home. The high number of returnees is "a sign of hope amid rising regional tensions," said Filippo Grandi, the UN's high commissioner for refugees.