The number of people forced to flee their homes to escape war or abuse has risen to its highest for 15 years, with four out of five refugees in developing countries, the United Nations said on Monday. In all, there were 43.7 million displaced people worldwide at the end of 2010, up from 43.3 million a year before, Reuters quoted the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as saying. They include 15.4 million refugees who fled across borders -- 80 percent of them to nearby developing countries -- and 27.5 million uprooted within their own homelands, it said in an annual report. Another 850,000 are asylum seekers who lodged claims. "Fear about supposed floods of refugees in industrialised countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with issues of migration," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement. "Meanwhile it's poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden," added Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal who heads the Geneva-based agency. The world's poorest countries host huge refugee populations, both in absolute terms and in relation to their economic size, according to its report, "Global Trends 2010". Slightly more than half of all refugees are children under 18. Pakistan, Iran and Syria host the most refugees, with 1.9 million, 1.1 million and 1 million respectively, it says. Afghans form the largest group, 3 million refugees, including many who left their homeland years ago, followed by Iraqis, Somalis and Congolese, whose countries are also mired in protracted conflicts. -- SPA
