33.3 million people worldwide internally displaced in 2013: UN

PanARMENIAN.Net - United Nations and Norwegian officials say a record 33.3 million people worldwide were displaced by conflict and violence inside their own nations in 2013.

That was 4.5 million above the 2012 total.

According to the Associated Press, the heads of the UN refugee agency and Norwegian Refugee Council reported Wednesday, May 14, that 8.2 million fled their homes in the last year, including about 3.5 million in Syria alone. The numbers show that every 60 seconds, another family within Syria flees the civil war.

The other two-thirds of the 33.3 million displaced by war worldwide fled in previous years.

The figures compiled by Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, part of the Norwegian agency, show that 63 percent of those internally displaced worldwide are struggling to live in five countries: Syria, Colombia, Nigeria, Congo and Sudan.