Seventy million people are displaced

Below is an excerpt from the editorial in The Irish Times yesterday.

It is a scandal. What am I doing about it, what is Ireland doing about it, what are the churches doing about it, what is the Dominican Order doing about it?

And all the time US President Donald Trump talks about making America great again.

More than 70 million people are now forcibly displaced – double the level of 20 years ago, according to new figures from the United Nationsrefugee agency, UNHCR. 

Even that number – a global record – is conservative; for instance, some four million Venezuelans are known to have left their country, making that one of the world’s biggest displacement crises, but only half a million of those individuals have to date made asylum claims. 

Overall, the total global refugee population is at the highest level on record – 25.9 million, a figure that includes the 5.5 million Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the UN Relief and Works Agency.