LONDON: A report released by rights group Amnesty International has said that Pakistan is home to 1.6 million refugees, hosting the third highest number of refugees in the world.

The report says Pakistan is third in line behind Jordan (over 2.7m refugees) and Turkey (over 2.5m refugees).

“10 countries accounting for 2.5 per cent of world’s GDP host more than half the world’s refugees and slammed what it called the selfishness of wealthy nations. Many of the world’s wealthiest nations “host the fewest and do the least”,” the London-based human rights body said in a report on the plight faced by the world’s 21 million refugees.

“56pc of refugees are being sheltered in 10 countries,” says the report, in which Amnesty proposed a solution whereby the world’s countries find a home for 10pc of the planet’s refugees every year.

Amnesty Secretary General Salil Shetty says that a small number of countries have been left to do far too much just because they are neighbours to a crisis.

He was presenting the report entitled “Tackling the global refugee crisis: from shirking to sharing responsibility”.

“It is not simply a matter of sending aid money. Rich countries cannot pay to keep people ‘over there’,” it said.

The “self-interest” of such countries meant the international refugee crisis was set to get worse, not better, Amnesty claimed.

“If every one of the wealthiest countries in the world were to take in refugees in proportion to their size, wealth and unemployment rate, finding a home for more of the world’s refugees would be an eminently solvable challenge,” said Shetty.

“That situation is inherently unsustainable, exposing the millions fleeing war and persecution in countries like Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq to intolerable misery and suffering.

“It is time for leaders to enter into a serious, constructive debate about how our societies are going to help people forced to leave their homes by war and persecution.”