With all the international turmoil bubbling around the world in various locations, 38 million innocent civilians have been displaced from their homes, trapped in conflict areas. The sheer volume of this demographic matches the population of major cities around the world, including Beijing, London or New York, according to the UN and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), as reported by Zee News out of India. NRC Secretary-General Jan Egeland said, “These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signaling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians.”

Data from the annual report prepared by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center shows that for the third consecutive year the numbers of displaced civilians has been alarmingly high. 11 million people were forced out of their homes due to violence in 2014 alone. “Global diplomats, UN resolutions, peace talks and cease-fire agreements have lost the battle against ruthless armed men who are driven by political or religious interests rather than human imperatives,” Egeland said.

The annual report containing this data was presented by Egeland in Wednesday in Geneva, along-side the deputy head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Volker Turk. The former UN secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs advocated for the urgency of this matter: “This report should be a tremendous wake-up call. We must break this trend where millions of men, women and children are becoming trapped in conflict zones around the world.” The growing issue makes those internally displaced innocents feel even more insecure and hopeless, forcing them to cross borders and become refugees.