on the run

8M Displaced By Violence in 2013

Number of refugees highest in 20 years.

This is an unhappy milestone. The number of people displaced from their homes by conflict is at the highest level in 20 years, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. By the beginning of this year, a total of 33 million people were counted as displaced as the result of violence, with 8 million being forced on the move in 2013 alone. “We have surpassed the darkest, bleakest days of the 1990s,” says council head Jana Egeland, listing that decade's devastation in Rwanda and Balkans. The biggest displacements are happening in Syria, where 9,500 people are forced to leave home each day, and Nigeria, where 3.3 million have fled. Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan round out the top five list.