A Record Year in Misery: the World Has Never Seen a Refugee Crisis This Bad

Any way you look at it, the post-World War II era has never seen a refugee crisis on the scale of 2014. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency’s annual report, last year saw the total number of forcibly displaced persons rise to 59.5 million, an all-time high. That figure includes 38.2 million that were displaced internally due to conflict, general violence, and human rights violations — also a record figure since such data began to be recorded in 1989. In 2014 alone, 13.9 million people were displaced due to conflict or persecution alone. More than half of refugees worldwide are children.