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33 million displaced by global violence — UN

A RECORD 33.3 million people worldwide were displaced by violence inside their own nations last year, UN and Norwegian officials said today.

The increase — 4.5 million more than in 2012 — was driven largely by Syria’s civil war.

The heads of the UN refugee agency and Norwegian Refugee Council reported that 8.2 million fled their homes in the last year alone, including about 3.5 million in Syria. 

The other two-thirds of the 33.3 million were made up of people who had fled in previous years.

The figures compiled by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre only cover 58 countries. But they showed that 63 per cent of internally displaced people are struggling to live in five countries: Syria, Colombia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said the upward trend in showed “what we are witnessing is a multiplication of conflicts and … it looks like old conflicts never die.”

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