Geneva — Conflicts, violence and persecution in Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and elsewhere have forced more than 2-million people to flee as refugees this year, the UN refugee chief said on Monday. At the end of 2016, a record 65.6-million people had been uprooted from their homes worldwide, with 22.5-million of them registered as refugees. "The despair of millions of men, women and children driven from their homes, cast adrift into a life of uncertainty, is a stain on our collective conscience," Filippo Grandi told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ annual executive committee meeting in Geneva. Calling for more international co-operation and support to address the crisis, he pointed to the dire needs of the more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims who have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar since August 25. During the same period, 50,000 refugees had flooded out of South Sudan and another 18,000 had fled clashes in the Central African Republic, he said. War-ravaged Syria continues t...
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