Report: 27.8 million people internally displaced last year

A Syrian woman cooks at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, on Tuesday May 10, 2016. About 54,000 refugees and migrants are currently stranded in Greece as 10,000 are camped in Idomeni, after the European Union and Turkey reached a deal designed to stem the flow of refugees into Europe’s prosperous heartland. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) (The Associated Press)

FILE- In this Wednesday, May 20, 2015 file photo, Ibrahim Omar, 45, right, and his children, Aseya, 3, Heyam, 6, Maryam, 10, and 1-year-old Saeed, pose for a photo as they stand next to their father in their room, at an orphanage that has been turned into a center for Yemeni refugees, in Obock, northern Djibouti. A major aid agency says 27.8 million people around the world were internally displaced by conflict and natural disasters last year, or as many as the combined populations of New York City, London, Paris and Cairo. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE- In this Tuesday, May 19, 2015 file photo, Ashwaq, 12, stands outside her family's tent, at the Markaze refugee camp in Obock, northern Djibouti. The Middle East has accounted for more than 50 per cent of the world's population internally displaced by conflict in 2015, with nearly 4.8 million new people forced to flee their homes. A major aid agency says 27.8 million people around the world were internally displaced by conflict and natural disasters last year, or as many as the combined populations of New York City, London, Paris and Cairo. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy, File) (The Associated Press)

A major aid agency says 27.8 million people around the world were internally displaced by conflict and natural disasters last year, or as many as the combined populations of New York City, London, Paris and Cairo.

A report by the Norwegian Refugee Council on Wednesday says 8.6 million of last year's internally displaced were uprooted by conflict, more than half of them in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The group says Yemen alone accounted for one quarter of conflict-related displacement worldwide last year, with 2.2 million people uprooted, or 20 times more than in 2014.

The NRC's Middle East director, Carsten Hansen, says that richer, more stable countries are trying to keep out asylum seekers and that "millions remain trapped in their own countries with death ... just around the corner."