Colombia tops global list for internally displaced people

PanARMENIAN.Net - Almost 29 million people lived in internal displacement in 2012, with 6.5 million newly displaced just in the past year, a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council suggests, according to BBC News.

For the fourth year running, Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people on the list. Globally, the total number of displaced people has risen, with the conflict in Syria blamed for much of the spike. A third of all internally displaced are in sub-Saharan Africa, the report says.

The annual report by the Norwegian Refugee Council's Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) suggests internal displacement - in which people flee from violence without crossing their country's borders - will continue to accelerate unless permanent solutions to conflicts are found.

IDMC Director Kate Halff says that governments are "responsible for finding long-term solutions for their displaced citizens".

The report says that Colombia, with its estimated 4.9 to 5.5 million internally displaced people tops the global list. It estimates that Colombia's internal armed conflict forced around 230,000 people to flee their homes in 2012.