One bright spot was that more refugees returned home than in years past (552,200 people). There were another 2.8 million asylum seekers, the report said.
Turkey was the country hosting the largest number of refugees in the world, with 3.1 million, followed by Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Pakistan. Of the 65.6 million people forcibly displaced globally, 10.3 million became displaced in 2016, about two-thirds of them (6.9 million) fleeing within their own countries.
He also called for properly protecting and caring for the world's refugees, internally displaced and asylum-seekers - who now number 22.5 million, 40.3 million, and 2.8 million, respectively.
Refugee numbers worldwide have reached 22.5 million, which the report notes "is the highest ever seen".
"By any measure, this is an unacceptable number, and it speaks louder than ever to the need for solidarity and common goal in preventing and resolving crises", he said. Twelve million people in the country were forced to abandon their homes in 2016 - that's more than half of the country's population.
Syria's six-year conflict alone has sent more than 5.5 million people seeking safety in other countries, including 825,000 last year alone, making it the world's biggest producer of refugees.
The UN refugee chief meanwhile voiced most alarm over the rapidly deteriorating situation in South Sudan, which he said was now the world's "fastest growing refugee crisis and displacement crisis".
While the conflict in Syria was the greatest source of newly recognised refugees in 2016, at 824,000, the UNHCR report points to the crises in sub-Saharan Africa as a major concern.
The new money, which comes on top of $36.9 million in humanitarian assistance to South Sudan Ottawa announced in March, will improve access to basic health services, including family planning and reproductive health care for women and girls as well as increasing access to food, Bibeau said.
The latest annual global trends study from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) reports that one person was forced to leave their home every three seconds in 2016.
The UNHCR said it hoped Monday's record breaking numbers would encourage wealthy countries to think again: Not just to accept more refugees, but to invest in peace promotion, and reconstruction.
Global Trends is a statistical assessment of forced displacement, and as such a number of key developments in the refugee world in 2016 are not captured.
Despite peace agreements and efforts to address a growing refugee crisis, the number of people forcibly displaced around the world continued to climb a year ago, according to a United Nations report issued Monday.
"The world seems to have become unable to make peace", Grandi said. The war in Syria, now in its seventh year, has created a total of 5.5 million refugees as of 2016.
"This equates to one person becoming displaced every three seconds - less than the time it takes to read this sentence", UNHCR pointed out in a statement. At least 75,000 asylum claims were received from an unaccompanied child.
In contrast, almost of all of the South Sudanese refugees have sought protection in neighbouring countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan.