More than 30 million people globally were internally displaced at the end of 2013 due to conflict, according to a new report launched at the United Nations in Geneva on Wednesday.
The report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), which is part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, covers 58 countries.
It reveals that more than 60 per cent of the displaced people are from just five countries; Syria, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and, for the first time, Nigeria where more than three million people have been displaced by conflict.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who participated in the launch of the report, praised cooperation with the Norwegian Refugee Council.
"I believe it's my duty to tell you that this report represents the most authoritative, probably I would even say the authoritative source of data in relation to internally displacement in the world. We use the IDMC Norwegian Refugee Council data in our work. We don't intend to produce our own statistics. This is the most authoritative source of information about internal displacement in the world." (29")
The report says that by the end of 2013, 8.2 million people were newly displaced, an increase of 1.6 million compared to the year before.
According to the report, a "shocking 43 per cent" of all the newly displaced people in 2013 were in Syria.
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Source : UN Multimedia