世界难民日:6000万人的逃亡之路

Stark warnings over the inability of the international community to cope with record numbers of refugees forced to flee war zones provided the grim backdrop to events marking World Refugee Day on Saturday.

According to the UN High Commission for Refugees almost 60 million have been displaced by conflict and persecution around the world. More than half of them are children.

This makes every 1 in 122 people in the world a refugee, an internally displaced person or an asylum seeker.

Angelina Jolie, the UN Special Envoy for refugees says the current international refugee crisis is caused by a breakdown in global security and governance.

"Our world has never been richer or healthier or more advanced yet never before had so many people been dispossessed and stripped of their basic human rights. We should call this what it is. This is not just a refugee crisis, but a crisis of global security and governance that is manifesting itself in a world refugee crisis that is the worst ever recorded. This is a time, we are living at a time of mass displacement."

Jolie visited a Refugee camp in Midyat near Turkey's border with Syria that has seen a massive influx of people fleeing persecution by the Islamic State, to mark World Refugee day on Saturday.

Last year, Turkey overtook Pakistan as the biggest refugee-hosting nation in the world, largely as a result of conflict in Iraq and Syria, where the war has entered its 5th year.

Turkey now hosts more than 2 million refugees and spends more than US$6 billion on helping Syrians alone.

Ahmad Lubbadah, a Syrian Refugee at the camp says he is dreaming of the day when he can return home.

"Today, we have lost our country. Our houses have been demolished and our children have been killed. We hope that we will be back home soon and that the situation will become stable. This is what I want."

With nearly four million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, a heavy toll has been placed on the local population. Basic infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and water supplies, has been placed under enormous strain.

It is less wealthy developing countries that host 86 per cent of the world's refugees.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres warned that the scale of the current crisis was overwhelming international humanitarian organizations, and was threatening to destabilize the poorer host nations.

But some countries that have the capacity to help are instead shutting their gates to people seeking asylum.

More people have been forced to flee their homes last year than at any time since the United Nations started keeping records, and they predict the situation was likely to worsen still further.

For CRI, I'm Poornima Weerasekara.