Between January and October this year, a total of 714,278 internally displaced Syrians returned to their places of origin within their country, while more than 13 million people in Syria continue to need humanitarian assistance, UN agencies said Tuesday.
Out of the total number of people who returned home, however, 37,635 were displaced again after their return, said the UN migration agency International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Jens Laerke, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a UN briefing that the conflict in Syria continues to be the principal driver of humanitarian needs.
"Close to seven years on, the scale, severity, and complexity of needs across Syria remain overwhelming. Some 13.1 million women, children and men require humanitarian assistance," said Laerke.
Of these, he said, 5.6 million people are in acute need due to a convergence of vulnerabilities resulting from displacement, exposure to hostilities, and limited access to basic goods and services.
IOM said that while people were returning to their areas of origin, from January to October this year, a total of 1,452,636 individuals were newly displaced inside Syria.
Most of these internally displaced people (IDPs) were from Ar-Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zor governorates, bringing the total number of IDPs inside Syria to 6.1 million since 2011.
The majority of those returning had been displaced within Syria with 58 percent having returned from Aleppo governorate, and many of them were returning to another area within Aleppo.
SOURCE: Xinhua
