ISLAMABAD: The past year was a "devastating" one for those caught up in war zones across the world, Amnesty International said, in its annual report published Wednesday.
Moreover, the human rights group added, with widespread violence triggering an "enormous refugee crisis," the outlook for 2015 remains bleak, International Business Times reports.
"Time and again, civilians bore the brunt in conflict," Salil Shetty, the organization's secretary general, said, in a statement.
In its report, Amnesty also accused the United Nations Security Council of failing to protect civilians in conflict-hit zones as 2014 saw over four million Syrians being displaced by an ongoing civil war, and a record number of migrants dying while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to enter Europe.
According to the report, the number of displaced people across the globe topped 50 million -- a figure not seen since end of World War II.
"The UN Security Council had repeatedly failed to address the crisis in Syria in earlier years, when countless lives could still have been saved.
That failure continued in 2014," Shetty said, in the statement, adding that a "callous indifference" toward loss of civilian lives was on display during Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, and during the protracted civil strife in the African nations of Nigeria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
The report said that armed groups committed abuses in at least 35 countries in 2014 and war crimes were carried out in at least 18 countries.
"It is essential to confront violations against civilians, and to bring to justice those responsible," the organization said, adding that removal of a veto on matters of genocide and war crimes "would be an important first step" towards providing justice to the victims.
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