Author:  Bill Frelick It shows a 28 percent increase in the number of asylum seekers lodging individual claims in these 44 countries. While at first glance the 612,700 new asylum applications look like an enormous number and a significant burden, a little perspective is in order. The report says that 56,400 asylum seekers from Syria lodged claims in 2013.That’s a big number, but bear in mind that Syria’s Middle Eastern neighbours are hosting more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees.Even though Germany and the United States rank one and two as the industrialized countries with the highest numbers of new asylum claims last year, their impact hardly compares to a country like Lebanon, which has far fewer resources and is itself shaken by sporadic violence. Last week the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon hit 1 million. That would be the equivalent of 18 million refugees arriving suddenly in Germany or 73 million arriving in the United States.Even among the 44 industrialized countries, the statistics can be somewhat misleading unless read carefully. The report counts 44,800 asylum seekers in Turkey. The breakdown? 25,300 Iraqis, 8,700 Afghans, 5,900 Iranians and 1,300 Somalis. What about Syrians? The report counts 108 for whom the UN high commissioner’s office conducted refugee status interviews. The 800-pound gorilla in the room, of course, is the more than 580,000 Syrian refugees that Turkey also hosts as a group, the same way most of the 15 million refugees living in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are hosted, and who are not counted in the Asylum Trends report because it counts only people making individual claims.  Read more: Human Rights Watch, 14/04/14