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Special Broadcast on FIRE-EARTH TODAY!

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11 Million More People Internally Displaced in 2014

Twice more IDPs than refugees worldwide

More than 38 million people worldwide are currently internally displaced (IDPs) due to conflict and violence, a rise for the third consecutive year, according to a report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC).

Last year alone, 11 million more people were displaced, the equivalent of 21 people every minute. “Never in the last 10 years of IDMC’s global reporting, have we reported such a high estimate for the number of people newly displaced in a year,” said the report.

“As of the end of 2014, 38 million people around the world had been forced to flee their homes by armed conflict and generalized violence, and were living in displacement within the borders of their own country. This represents a 15 per cent increase on 2013, and includes 11 million people who were newly displaced during the year, the equivalent of 30,000 people a day.”

11 Million people were newly displaced in 2014, or the equivalent of 30,000 fleeing each day from conflict and violence. Image source: Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC).

There are now twice more internally displaced people (IDPs) than refugees worldwide, says the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Refugees are people who have crossed an international border escaping danger and who have international legal status. However, there is no coherent international protection structure for IDPs, says the UN agency.

Prolonged conflict and violence in five countries—Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria—accounted for 60 per cent of new displacements in 2014, including 2.2 million people in Iraq who fled areas that had been captured by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and more than one million South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo each.

About 77% of the world’s IDPs live in just 10 countries: Syria (7.6 million or 19.90%), Colombia (6.04 million), Iraq (3,38 million), Sudan (3.1 million), DR Congo (2.76 million), Pakistan (1.9 million), South Sudan (1.5 million), Somalia (1.11 million), Nigeria (1.08 million) and Turkey (953,700).

IDMC reported two new countries for the first time in 2014: Ukraine, where conflict displaced 646,500, and El Salvador, with 288,900 IDPs.

“Data on IDPs tends to focus on those living in camps, camp-like settings and collective centres, who are acknowledged to make up only a small fraction of the displaced population. Increasing numbers of IDPs also flee to urban areas where they are largely invisible among the urban poor, and these two factors mean that overall this report is likely to understate the true scale of displacement,” says the report.

[Additionally, no data is available on the IDPs in several countries, including Sri Lanka. —Editor]

The reported 38 million total does not reflect the tens of millions of people who have been internally displaced by natural disasters, says the report.