Page 4 - IO1-Report

KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for School Education
The Universal Language of Mathematics (2018-1-TR01-KA201-059704)

Introduction

The number of people fleeing war, conflicts and persecution has never been higher than it is today. In
2019, a total of 79.5 million people worldwide have been forcibly set out to leave their home. (UNHCR
2019). Of these, approximately 41.3 million were people internally displaced within their home countries,
25.9 were refugees and 3.5 were asylum seekers. In total, over half of all refugees worldwide were
children under the age of 18 (UNHCR 2019c). The UNHCR’s website has visualized the data as following:

Figure 1: (UNHCR 2019)

According to UNHCR (2019c), the majority of people (39 percent) flee from conflict, violence or
persecution to various host countries in the Middle East and North Africa and remain, however, in this
region. 29 percent of forcibly displaced people flee within or to sub-Saharan Africa, 14 percent of people
flee within or to Asia and the Pacific region and 12 percent to North and South America. Only 6 percent
of the world's refugees make their way to Europe. (UNHCR 2019c) Recognizing that in 2015 over 50
percent of people fleeing were from Somalia (1.1 million), Afghanistan (2.7 million) and Syria (4.9
million), the majority of refugees remained – as the following figure shows – in surrounding and
neighbouring countries. (UNHCR 2016):

Figure 2 (UNHCR 2016: Major host countries of refugees worldwide)

1