Iraq News

10 million internally displaced by conflict in 2018: monitors

Conflict forced more than 10 million people to flee their homes to live elsewhere within their own country last year, bringing the total number of people internally displaced by violence to a record high, AFP reported Friday (May 10th).

This brings the total number of people currently living in internal displacement due to violence to 41.3 million, an all-time high, according to a report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

A total of 28 million people were displaced internally in 2018, by natural disasters as well as conflicts, the report said.

A full 10.8 million of new internally displaced persons (IDPs) last year were fleeing conflict, with strife in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria and intercommunal tensions in Ethiopia, Cameroon and Nigeria responsible for most of the displacements, the study said.

The number of people currently living as IDPs is far higher than the some 25 million who have fled across borders as refugees.

The report found that the highest number of new internal displacements last year was in Ethiopia, with 2.9 million people fleeing their homes, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 1.8 million fresh IDPs in 2018.

Syria came third with 1.6 million new internal displacements.

But in total, Syria, ravaged by eight years of war, counts 6.1 million IDPs, in addition to around the same number of Syrians still living as refugees.

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