About 13.6 million people, equivalent to the population of London, have been displaced by conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and many are without food or shelter as winter starts, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said yesterday.
Amin Awad, UNHCR’s director for the Middle East and north Africa, said the world was becoming numb to the refugees’ needs.
“Now when we talk about a million people displaced over two months, or 500,000 overnight, the world is just not responding,” he told reporters in Geneva.
The 13.6 million include 7.2 million displaced within Syria – an increase from a long-held UN estimate of 6.5 million – as well as 3.3 million Syrian refugees abroad.
Reuters
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