UN chief seeks $8 billion for South Sudan refugee crisis

Unaccompanied minors who fled civil war in South Sudan draw during a vist of United Nations Secretary General at Imvepi settlement camp in northern Uganda Antonio Guterres June 22, 2017. REUTERS/James Akena - RTS188IG

The United Nations secretary-general is making a plea for protection of refugees around the world, saying some richer countries haven't been as tolerant as some in Africa.

Antonio Guterres today addressed a UN-backed summit in Uganda that seeks USD 8 billion for nearly a million South Sudanese refugees and the host communities that officials say are near the breaking point.

Guterres has said Uganda last year received three times more refugees from South Sudan than those crossing the central Mediterranean.

He called South Sudan's refugee influx "the biggest exodus of refugees in Africa since the Rwanda genocide" of 1994.

The East African nation now hosts 950,000 people from South Sudan in what has become the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis. Most have arrived in the past year.