UN report:9.56 million people displaced by war so far

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR has said Russia-Ukraine conflict has sparked Europe’s gravest refugee crisis since World War II.   UNHCR, in its latest figures said that  9.56 million people have been displaced by the war so far. A paper issued on Friday by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said around a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people have been forced to leave their homes. According to the Agency, Ukraine is fast on course in just three weeks toward the levels of displacement from Syria’s devastating war, which has driven about 13 million people from their homes both in the country and abroad. 

“By these estimates, roughly half the country is either internally displaced, stranded in affected areas or unable to leave, or has already fled to neighboring countries,” it said. The paper cited the IOM figures as “a good representation of the scale of internal displacement in Ukraine — calculated to stand at 6.48 million internally displaced persons in Ukraine as of March 16.”