UN says 800,000 Syrians will emigrate this year

Some 804,000 Syrians will flee the war-torn nation over the course of 2015, according to the latest estimates from the UN.

A large proportion of that number will cross the border into neighbouring Turkey, which is expected to be hosting approximately 2.5 million refuges before the beginning of next year, revealed UN Development Program (UNDP) administrator Helen Clark.

Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, explained that not all of the refugees will go to Turkey, as some will opt for other nearby countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, but forecast that by the end of 2015 there would be 2.5 million staying in Turkey.

She went on to note that Turkey was already hosting 1.7 Syrian refugees, as well as 300,000 from Iraq, meaning it is now home to more refugees than any other country in the world.

The UNDP administrator also revealed that there were 7.5 million people currently internally displaced in Syria, which equated to around a third of the overall population, adding that that number could increase if the conflict continued as it was at the present time.

She pointed out that if those 7.5 million internally displaced people wanted to flee to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq or Europe the refugee crisis would deepen even further, adding that a political solution was needed urgently.