51m refugees in 2013

Asia and the Pacific region have the largest number of refugees, over 3.5 million, the UN refugee agency has said in a report. UNHCR's annual Global Trends report published on the World Refugee Day on Friday put the number of forcibly displaced people at 51.2 million at the end of 2013. The number is six million higher than 2012 and the highest since the post-World War II era, the agency said. What is more astonishing is the fact that half of the world's refugees in 2013 were children. Displacement data in the annual report covers refugees, asylum-seekers and the internally displaced. An UNHCR press release said Bangladesh had the ninth-highest number of refugees in relation to its national economy. There are more than 30,000 refugees from Myanmar registered in two official camps with an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 more unregistered living outside. In 2013, Bangladesh took up a strategy to “list” the unregistered Myanmar population. ‘It would be a positive step towards recognizing the existence of this population,’ the agency said. It hopes the move will grant these people access to documentation, assistance and justice, according to bdnews24.com.