Ethiopia hosts second largest refugee population in Africa, says UNHCR

ESAT News (October 18, 2018)

The UN refugee agency said Ethiopia is host to the second largest refugee population in Africa, sheltering 905,831 registered refugees and asylum seekers as of 31 August 2018.

The UNHCR said between January and August 2018, 36,185 refugees arrived in Ethiopia, mostly from South Sudan and Eritrea.

The agency said it requested a funding of $327.8M of which only $68.3M has been obtained so far.

The UNHCR said it is also actively actively participating in the humanitarian response to the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) situation in Ethiopia and has deployed two Emergency Response Teams to Gedeo and West Guji.

Last month the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said 1.4 million new internal displacements have been recorded in Ethiopia, surpassing both Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The IDMC said ethnic conflict in Gedeo and West Guji zones in the south of the country earlier this year has triggered more than a million new displacements.