The war in Syria, now in its fifth year, has not only flooded countries in the region with millions of refugees. It has driven up the number of people seeking asylum across the world to a 20-year high, according to the United Nations.
About 866,000 people sought asylum in the world’s industrialized countries in 2014, growing by 45 percent over 2013, according tonumbers released Thursday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. One in five asylum seekers were Syrians, with Iraqis and Afghans the next largest groups.
Not since the peak of the war in the Balkans, in 1992, has the world witnessed such a surge of people arriving on foreign shores seeking protection. The United Nations refugee agency chief, António Guterres, nudged world leaders to be “just as generous” to Syrians now as they had been to the Balkans then.
An asylum seeker is defined as someone who claims to be fleeing persecution at home.
