Geneva, Rajab 17, 1436, May 06, 2015, SPA -- The number of internally displaced people reached a record total of 38 million last year, as conflicts in the Middle East and Africa forced additional millions from their homes, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said Wednesday, according to dpa. Some 11 million people became refugees in their own countries last year, the equivalent of the entire population of Haiti, according to an annual report by NRC's monitoring office in Geneva. The majority of these newly displaced people were in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. Hundreds of thousands also fled from violence in Ukraine. Senior UN refugee agency official Volker Tuerk warned that internal displacement ends up creating masses of desperate people who are willing to cross borders or take dangerous trips across the Mediterranean to seek asylum abroad. "The obvious solution lies in an all-out effort to bring about peace in war-ravaged countries," Mr Tuerk added. --SPA 13:41 LOCAL TIME 10:41 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w