UNITED NATIONS, March 26 (UPI) -- Claims for asylum, prompted by events in Syria and Iraq, increased by 45 percent in 2014, the United Nations refugee agency reported Thursday.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) report, "Asylum Trends 2014," indicated 866,000 applications for asylum were filed in industrialized countries, up from 596,000 in 2013. Germany had the most with 173,000, followed by the United States, Turkey, Sweden and Italy. The top five countries received 60 percent of the world's claims, and the 150,000 applications from Syria accounted for one-fifth of all claims. The asylum claims in the United States were mostly from Mexico and Central America.