BSS/AFP :
More than five million Ukrainians have now fled their country following the Russian invasion, the United Nations said Wednesday, in Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said 5,034,439 Ukrainians had left since Russia invaded on February 24 — an increase of 53,850 over Tuesday’s total.
“Eight weeks into the conflict, we are at five million and counting, with five million unique stories of loss and trauma,” said deputy UNHCR chief Kelly T. Clements. The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) says more than 218,000 third-country nationals-largely students and migrant workers-have also escaped to neighbouring countries, meaning more than 5.25 million people in all have fled Ukraine since the war began. Women and children account for 90 percent of those who fled, with men aged 18 to 60 eligible for military call-up and unable to leave. Nearly two-thirds of all Ukrainian children have been forced from their homes, including those still inside the country.
“While the sheer scale and speed of displacement is immense, we must not lose sight of what these figures mean,” Clements told the UN Security Council from Hungary on Tuesday.”Women, children, and the aged, have left their homes, their lives, their sons, their fathers and husbands. “Each one of the millions of displaced are forced to make impossible, heartbreaking decisions and have left everything, almost everything, they hold dear.”More than 2.8 million Ukrainian refugees have fled to Poland.
