Number of people made homeless by conflict soars

April 16, 2007 (GENEVA) — The number of people driven from their homes by conflicts around the world more than doubled in 2006 to 4 million, with the Middle East being the worst hit, the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Monday.

In its annual report on internally displaced people (IDPs) — individuals who do not cross frontiers — the council said over three million people returned home during the year.

The total number of displaced people was 25 million, more than twice the number of refugees — people who have left their country — worldwide.

The two-month war between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrillas and ethnic bloodletting in Iraq were the two single largest causes of internal displacement last year, the non-governmental organisation said.

“While most Lebanese and Israelis were able to return soon after the August 2006 ceasefire, the Iraq crisis continues unabated and has dramatically aggravated what is one of the world’s worst internal displacement crises,” the council said.

The council, which runs the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva, issued its report on the eve of a two-day United Nations-organised conference here on the Iraqi refugee problem.

Some 2 million Iraqi refugees have fled their homeland, while a further 1.9 million are displaced within the country, some 700,000 of them within the last 14 months during which sectarian violence has worsened.

“After centuries of cohabitation … the current wave of displacements … could result in a permanent redrawing of the ethnic and religious map of Iraq,” the council warned.

Sudan, with some 5 million IDPs, remains the country with the largest single number, followed by Colombia with nearly 4 million, Iraq, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(Reuters)