Angelina Jolie Pitt, the UN refugee agency's special envoy, has warned that the international humanitarian system for refugees is breaking down.

Jolie Pitt has been speaking as part of the BBC's World on the Move day of coverage of global migration issues.

She warned against a "fear of migration" and a "race to the bottom" as countries competed to be the toughest to protect themselves, the BBC reported on Monday.

Earlier, the UNHCR's head said the refugee crisis was now a global issue.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told the BBC that simply turning migrants away "won't work".

Jolie Pitt said that more than 60 million people - one in 122 - were displaced globally - more than at any time in the past 70 years.

"This tells us something deeply worrying about the peace and security of the world," she said, adding: "The average time a person will be displaced is now nearly 20 years."

Jolie Pitt said the "number of conflicts and scale of displacement had grown so large" the system to protect and return refugees was not working.

She said that UN appeals were drastically under-funded.

"With this then the state of today's world, is it any surprise that some of these desperate people, who are running out of all options and who see no hope of returning home, would make a push for Europe as a last resort, even at the risk of death?" 

Source ; MENA