World’s forcibly displaced hit record 38 million, prompting UN appeal for ‘all-out effort’ for peace | Division for Inclusive Social Development (DISD)

By the end of 2014, a record-breaking 38 million people had been forced to flee their homes within their own country because of conflict or violence, prompting the United Nations refugee agency to appeal today for “an all-out effort to bring about peace in war-ravaged countries.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) along with one of its partners, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), released these alarming figures at a joint press conference in Geneva to launch the report, Global Overview 2015: people internally displaced by conflict and violence.

The report, compiled by the NRC's the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), revealed that 38 million people have been internally displaced by conflict or violence, the equivalent of the total populations of London, New York and Beijing combined, representing a 4.7 million increase compared to 2013.

With internal displacement figures reaching a record high for the third year in a row, the report also shows that 11 million people were newly displaced by violent events throughout 2014, which amounts to 30,000 people forcibly displaced every day.

The report showed that Syria, with 7.6 million displaced people or at least 40 per cent of its population, makes it the country with the largest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world, and Iraq, suffered the most new displacement, with at least 2.2 million people fleeing in areas that fell under Islamic State control.

“We know that more and more internally displaced have been forced to move within their country multiple times,” said Volker Türk, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection. “The longer a conflict lasts, the more insecure [displaced persons] feel and when hopelessness sets in, many will cross borders and become refugees.”

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