Over 31 Million People Displaced By Conflicts, Disasters In 2016

OSLO, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd May, 2017 ) : Conflict, violence and disasters caused 31.1 million new internal displacements in 2016, according to a new report released by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), IINA reported.

Of the 6.9 million new internal displacements caused by conflict in 2016, 2.6 million took place in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Global Report on Internal Displacement. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was the country worst affected, with a spike of 922,000 new displacements during the year alone.

Next were Syria (824,000), Iraq (659,000), Afghanistan (653,000), Nigeria (501,000) and Yemen (478,000). As of the end of 2016, a total of 40.3 million people were displaced within their own country as a result of conflict and violence, some of whom having been displaced for decades.

The report suggested that disasters displaced three times more people than conflicts. Most of the 24 million new disaster displacements recorded in 2016 were linked to sudden-onset weather hazards such as floods, storms, wildfires and severe winter conditions.