ISLAMABAD: A major aid agency said that 27.8 million people around the world were internally displaced by conflicts and natural disasters last year, calling it a global crisis.
That's as many as the combined populations of New York City, London, Paris and Cairo or an average of 66,000 people displaced every day in 2015.
A report by the Norwegian Refugee Council said that 8.6 million of last year's internally displaced were uprooted by conflict, more than half of them in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, according to a report quoted by Arab news.
The group's Middle East director, Carsten Hansen, said that while the world's attention was focused on Middle Eastern refugees, or those who fled their homelands, millions were displaced internally in the region.
"Millions remain trapped in their own countries with death just around the corner," he said.
The total of those internally displaced by conflict in the world now stands at 40.8 million, including the newly displaced 8.6 million last year.
"This is the highest number ever recorded, and twice the number of refugees worldwide," said Jan Egeland, the head of the NRC.
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