Refugees of World War I

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The First World War generated population displacements of an unprecedented scale, of more than 12,000,000 civilians, (later exceeded by those of the Second World War which reached 60,000,000).^[1] The director of the civil affairs office of the Red Cross wrote at the end of the war that: “There were refugees everywhere. As if the whole world had to move or was waiting to do so”.^[2] Refugees were generated throughout all the territories affected the war, from Belgium and France to Italy, Austro-Hungary, Russia and Serbia.^[3] Numerous refugees also appeared as a consequence of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire during that period.^[4]