UN Refugee Agency Says Record 1Mln Displaced In Somalia In Four Months

More than 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Somalia in just 130 days due to a mix of conflict, severe drought and devastating floods, marking a record rate of displacement for the African country, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th May, 2023) More than 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Somalia in just 130 days due to a mix of conflict, severe drought and devastating floods, marking a record rate of displacement for the African country, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.

"The figures recorded by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), show that conflict was among the main causes of displacement between 1 January and 10 May this year, while over 408,000 people were displaced by floods engulfing their villages and another 312,000 people by ravaging drought," the agency said.

UNHCR Representative in Somalia Magatte Guisse said the humanitarian needs in Somalia continued to grow.

"We are working together with humanitarian agencies to respond as best we can, but with new displacement climbing by the day, the needs are overwhelming," Guisse said.

NRC country director in Somalia, Mohamed Abdi, said the humanitarian organizations "can only fear the worst in the coming months as all the ingredients of this catastrophe are boiling in Somalia."

Somalia has been embroiled in a series of bloody civil conflicts since the early 1990s, which prompted the deployment of a series of UN and African Union peacekeeping missions, in addition to stringent restrictions on the import of weapons under an international arms embargo.