Myanmar coup displaces thousands as global refugee numbers rise
Al JazeeraNumber of refugees worldwide increases for a ninth year in a row as people continue to be displaced amid the COVID crisis. Indrika Ratwatte, director of the UNHCR Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, said in Bangkok on Friday that an estimated 200,000 people were added to the number of Internally Displaced People in Myanmar in the last four months, since the removal of Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government in February. Ratwatte was speaking at the presentation of the annual UNHCR Global Trends Report on refugees, during which he also said that in the last 10 years, the number of refugees worldwide had doubled. Children account for 42 per cent of all forcibly displaced people worldwide, with estimates showing that almost one million of them were born as refugees between 2018 and 2020, the report said. BREAKING: Despite #COVID19, the number of people fleeing wars, violence, persecution & human rights violations in 2020 rose to nearly 82.4 million peoplehttps://t.co/MQQOoE1eXM — UNHCR News June 18, 2021 “We need much greater political will to address conflicts and persecution that force people to flee in the first place,” said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, in a separate statement accompanying the announcement.