GENEVA: Developing countries, not rich Western nations, are bearing the brunt of the world’s refugee crisis. They are hosting most of the record 70.8 million displaced people who have fled war and persecution. The United Nations said this on Wednesday. Half of ‘the forcibly displaced individuals in the world’ are children and the 2018 total is the highest in nearly 70 years.

The U.N. refugee agency released the data in its annual flagship report, Global Trends. But the global figure, which comprises 25.9 million refugees, 41.3 million people uprooted within their homelands, and 3.5 million asylum-seekers, is only a “conservative” estimate, said the U.N. report.

That is because it does not include most of the 4 million Venezuelans who have fled abroad since 2015 because they do not need visas and they do not lodge asylum claims to stay in most host countries.

“Certainly if the situation is not solved politically in Venezuela, with a political agreement, we will see a continuation of this exodus,” Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told a news briefing.

Venezuelans, arriving mainly in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, formed the second biggest flow abroad last year, after Syrians fleeing to Turkey following eight years of war, the report said. ‘When you say Europe has a refugee emergency, or the United States, or Australia – No,’ Grandi answers emphatically. (Agencies)