UN: Number of world's displaced over 50 million
Source: AP-EXCITE
By BARBARA SURK and JOHN HEILPRIN
BEIRUT (AP) — For the first time since the World War II era, the number of people forced from their homes worldwide has surged past 50 million, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.
Syrians fleeing the bloodletting at home and a fast-growing web of other crises across the world accounted for the spike in the displaced, the UNHCR said in its annual Global Trends Report.
At the end of last year, 51.2 million people had been forced from their homes worldwide, the highest figure of displacement since World War II, said the UNHCR.
That's six million more people than at the end of the previous year, reflecting what the agency described as important undercurrents in international relations. At the end of 2012, there were 45.2 million displaced in the world, according to the agency.
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Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140620/un-refugees-202a33a1d3.html
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres greets a Syrian child during his visit to Khaldeh, south of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 19, 2014. Guterres is visiting Lebanon where he will meet some Syrian refugees and discuss the situation with Lebanese officials. Lebanon, home to 4.5 million people, is struggling to cope with the presence of more than 1 million refugees in desperate need of housing, education and medical care. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
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If displaced people had their own country it would be the 24th most populous in the world.
The increase of 6 million over the 2012 figures has mainly been driven by the war in Syria. By the end of last year, 2.5 million Syrians had fled across the country's borders and 6.5 million were internally displaced – more than 40% of the population.
Conflicts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan also contributed to rising numbers.
The data represented "a world where peace is dangerously in deficit", said Guterres. "And that peace deficit represents the incapacity of the international community firstly to prevent conflicts and secondly, to find solutions to those conflicts."
Thanks for the OP, Omaha Steve.
50 million would have to be 144.82 million. That's in 1945 v 2014 terms.
Wait, now it's 144.83. 
Moved again, 144.84. Damn, the world's human population is out of control! 144.85, 144.86.... 
