Share

The past decade has seen a substantial increase in the world’s forcibly displaced population. Every minute, 31 people around the world are forced to flee their homes. That amounts to 44,400 every day. To escape war, persecution, natural disasters, poverty and hunger, millions of people, they risk everything to find safety and security.

As of the most recent 2017 year-end data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of displaced people worldwide reached an all time high of 68.5 million - more than the population of the United Kindgom. This number includes 25.4 million refugees receiving protection outside of their home countries. However, the vast majority (40 million) are people who have been displaced within the borders of their own countries as so-called Internally Displaced Persons - or IDPs.

War and violence are the drivers of most of the displacements. The ongoing civil war in Syria accounts for the most refugees, with 12.6 million Syrians now displaced within or outside the country, but the increase in global population of forcibly displaced persons has also been fueled by significant deterioration of the humanitarian conditions in several countries: Colombia has the second largest displaced population at 7.9 million people, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, about 4.4 million people were displaced as a result of violence in 2017, double the number from the previous year. New crises also arose in 2017. Violence in Myanmar sparked a mass exodus of members of the Rohingya ethnic group. Over the course of three months, 655,500 refugees had arrived in Bangladesh in what was termed the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis.

A core part of our work is to enable and support comprehensive and durable solutions for refugees and displaced persons to allow them rebuild their lives and live in health and dignity.

In cooperation with our local partner organization, our global Malteser International colleagues are providing cross-border medical aid for Syrians affected by the civil war since 2012. This includes aid for Syrian refugees in neighboring countries Lebanon and Turkey, as well as internally displaced Syrians who are either unable or unwilling to leave their homeland. Also in northern Iraq, we have expanded our emergency relief projects for refugees and displaced persons, and are supporting them in rebuilding their lives.

Just as the refugee crisis is not limited to the Middle East, our aid for refugees and displaced people encompasses a range of countries in Latin America, including the current Venezuela-Colombia refugee crisis, and in Africa and Asia, including Bangladesh, Nigeria, Thailand, Myanmar, Uganda, South Sudan, DR Congo, and Ukraine, where we work to provide an improved standard of health and quality of life for people who have been forced to flee their homes.

PROJECT GALLERY