LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Syrians will become the world’s largest refugee population in about three months if current trends continue, U.N. figures show.
More than 2.3 million Syrians have already fled the civil war in their homeland but, with 100,000 new refugees registering every month, Syria will soon outstrip Afghanistan as the biggest source of refugees.
The Afghan refugee population, the world’s largest for more than 30 years, has fallen from a peak of more than 6 million in the 1990s to around 2.58 million now.
“The conflict in Syria shows no signs of abating and with current trends continuing it’s very likely that Syrians will become the largest refugee group in the world in a matter of months,” a U.N. source told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The Syrian refugee population has trebled in the last year, overtaking those from Somalia and Iraq. Most Syrian refugees have gone to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, which are struggling to cope with the huge influx.
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