(AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

GENEVA (AP) — The number of people displaced from their homes across the world due to war and persecution climbed slightly to a record 65.6 million last year, with the escalating conflict in South Sudan largely accounting for the rise, the United Nations refugee agency said Monday. The total number of displaced people worldwide, a figure that includes refugees, asylum-seekers and people uprooted inside their own countries, was about 300,000 higher at the end of 2016 than at the end of 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said. "Although these figures represent small shifts compared to the previous year ... the relatively stable figures mask a very unstable situation," agency chief Filippo Grandi said ahead of the official release of the report Monday. At the end of 2016, there were about 40.3 million internally displaced people in the world, down slightly from 40.8 million a year earlier, with Syria, Iraq and Colombia accounting for the greatest numbers. Another 22.5 million people -- half of them children -- were registered as refugees last year, the UNHCR report showed, pointing out that this is "the highest level ever recorded." Syria's six-year civil war remained the largest single source of displacement, with 12 million people being displaced -- around two-thirds of the population. Graphic by Diana Yukari

While the ongoing conflict in Syria once again contributed to the largest number of displaced people, countries all over the world had high numbers of people who were forced to leave their homes. The U.N. refugee chief meanwhile voiced most alarm over the rapidly deteriorating situation in South Sudan, which he said was currently the world's "fastest growing refugee crisis and displacement crisis." Syria and South Sudan were far from the only countries where people were being uprooted en masse, with Monday's report also pointing to large-scale displacement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan, just to name a few.
The number of people displaced globally totals 65.6 million after an addition of 10.3 million people displaced in 2016. Syria, Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq and South Sudan are the countries in the top five.