19 June 2017•Update: 20 June 2017
By Fatih Erel
GENEVA
Turkey, for the third consecutive year, has hosted the largest number of refugees worldwide, a new UN report has said.
Turkey was also the world’s fourth-largest recipient of individual asylum claims in 2016, according to the UNHCR.
A record 65.6 million people were forcibly displaced across the world and the global refugee population was also the highest on record -- 22.5 million -- at the end of 2016, according to the agency.
The UNHCR's new Global Trends report on displacement said at the end of last year 300,000 more people than the preceding year had been displaced.
Out of the 65.6 million worldwide total, 22.5 million are refugees, 40.3 million are internally displaced and 2.8 million are asylum seekers.
The main country of origin for refugees in 2016 was Syria, accounting for 5.5 million refugees. Afghanistan was second with 2.5 million and South Sudan was third with 1.4 million.
After Turkey, Pakistan hosted the second-largest number of refugees (1.4 million) followed by Lebanon with one million.
Syria continued to have the largest forcibly displaced population -- 12 million -- including 5.5 million refugees, 6.3 million internally displaced people and 185,000 asylum seekers.
Colombia was second with 7.7 million people forcibly displaced and Afghanistan with 4.7 million.
During last year, 10.3 million people were newly displaced by conflict or persecution, creating 20 new displacements worldwide every minute.
The UNHCR also estimated that at least 10 million people were stateless or at risk of statelessness in 2016.
The number of new asylum claims remained high at two million. With 722,400 claims, Germany was the world's largest recipient of new individual applications, followed by the U.S. with 262,000, Italy with 123,000 and Turkey with 78,600.
