Terre Des Hommes for the World Refugee Day on June 20th
Osnabrück/Berlin 19.06.2025 - more than 122 million people are on the run worldwide, 40 percent - more than 48 million - are children. These figures emerge from the 2024 world refugee report, which the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR) recently published.
The number of children who have to flee or are sold worldwide increases by more than a million compared to 2023. If you look at the past five years, the number of refugees even rose by at least 13 million. The increase falls at a time when bald strikes in the budgets of state development cooperation put a lot of pressure on refugees.
"It is a cynical catastrophe that the USA and several European countries, especially Germany, which radically shorten the funds of development cooperation and humanitarian aid at the moment in which a record number of people is on the run and suffers from hunger, thirst and the lack of medical care," said Joshua Hofert, spokesman for the children's rights organization Terre Des Hommes . “From a humanitarian point of view, the fact that children who were driven out of their homeland are not simply left to their fate. At the same time, the help for refugees and displaced people is indispensable to prevent the devil circles of poverty and always new herds of conflict. "
The reasons for flight are mainly wars and conflicts: the largest groups of displaced people form people from Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. The Sudan recorded a particularly drastic increase: more than 3.5 million people were driven out there in 2024 alone or forced to flee, more than 14 million are on the run.
Terre Des Hommes is currently promoting projects for refugees from all the countries mentioned: for example in South Sudan, where the partner organization »Jesuit Refugee Service« supports fled families from Sudan as well as domestic domestic people with food and helps them build up their own livelihood. The United States's medium -sized cuts had noticeable consequences on site: free school feeding, for refugee children the most important meal of the day, had to be set in several regions. The partner organization itself had to relieve a large part of the employees.
»In South Sudan, the emergency of refugees is particularly drastic: the food aids were not sufficient before the cuts. The recording communities are overcrowded and the adults have little chance of finding a regular job without help. The result is that many children are malnourished, cannot go to school or even have to work themselves, «says Hofert.
“This shows that the life and future of millions of children are at stake. Terre Des Hommes therefore calls on the Federal Government and the members of the Bundestag to provide further life -saving resources instead of reducing humanitarian commitment as announced. Where other partners fail, it is all the more decisive that we step in wherever possible and stay firmly alongside the children. "