ADDIS ABABA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) said on Friday it would need 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 to meet the humanitarian needs of around 8 million people in Ethiopia.
In a press statement, UN-OCHA said it has so far received close to 636 million dollars out of the 1.2 billion dollars needed to meet humanitarian needs in Ethiopia.
UN-OCHA said Ethiopia is among the top 10 countries needing urgent humanitarian aid alongside war-torn countries like Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.
A dramatic rise in the number of internally displaced people in Ethiopia is expected to be a major humanitarian challenge for UN-OCHA and allied development partners, it said.
In August, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said the number of internally displaced people in Ethiopia had reached 2.8 million, up from 1.6 million at the beginning of the year.
Rising communal violence and natural disasters across various parts of Ethiopia in the first half of 2018 is thought to be behind the spike in the number of internally displaced.
Oromia, Somali and Southern regional states house most of those internally displaced Ethiopians.
Ethiopia also hosts more than 900,000 refugees from 26 other countries.
