The number of asylum seekers in industrialised countries has risen by nearly a quarter, the UN refugee agency says.

AFP
Abc

Syrian refugees walk past a makeshift market in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. AFP/ Khalil Mazraawi

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the rise was being driven by wars in Syria and Iraq as well as instability in Afghanistan, Eritrea and elsewhere.

In the first six months of this year, the total number of people requesting refugee status in such countries increased to 330,700 – more than 24 per cent up on the same period last year.

“We are clearly into an era of growing conflict,” UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement on his agency’s latest Asylum Trends report.

“The global humanitarian system is already in great difficulty.

“The international community needs to prepare their populations for the reality that in the absence of solutions to conflict, more and more people are going to need refuge and care in the coming months and years.”

The report was based on data received from 44 governments in Europe, North America and parts of the Asia-Pacific region.

Based on historical norms of higher numbers of asylum seekers in the second half of each year, it said the 2014 total could hit 700,000 people seeking asylum.

That would mark a 20-year high for industrialised countries, and a level unseen since the Balkan wars of the 1990s sparked by the break-up of Yugoslavia.

The bulk of new asylum claims were in just six countries: Germany, the United States, France, Sweden, Turkey and Italy.

Central Europe, in particular Hungary and Poland, as well as Australia, saw declines in the number of people asking for refugee status.

Overall, Syria was the main country of origin of people seeking asylum, with claims more than doubling to 48,400 from the 18,900 filed in the first half of 2013.

Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled in the face of the offensive by the Islamic State jihadist group, produced 21,300 asylum applications, followed by Afghanistan with 19,300, and Eritrea with 18,900.

The UNHCR emphasised that the number of people applying for refugee status in the 44 industrialised countries covered by the report only painted part of the picture.

Worldwide, 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced as of the end of 2013. Most remained within the borders of their embattled homelands, or had fled to neighbouring countries.