Expert: More than 60m refugees around the world

There are currently more than 60 million refugees around the world, with one person being forced to move away from their home every three minutes, a professor at New York University has revealed.

Associate professor of applied psychology, Selcuk Sirin, told the Anadolu Agency that the number of refugees around the world has increased after the worsening security situation in the Middle East.

According to the academic, children, women and the elderly make up the majority of evacuees, while more than half of the refugees around the world are under 18 years old; more than 40 per cent are under the age of 12.

Three per cent of Turkey’s population is now made up of refugees, he explained, stressing on the need to educate and integrate the refugees.

“We have to protect Syrian children from terrorist networks and drug traffickers. It is clear that the war in Syria will continue for many years, therefore the majority of these refugees are expected to stay in Turkey and obtain Turkish citizenship,” he said.