A record 75.9 million people are living in internal displacement due to conflict, and nearly half that number is in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a recent report.

The report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) shows 34.8 million people in the region were displaced in 2023, up from the previous year. The biggest increase came in Sudan, which is currently in the midst of civil war.

Sudanese doctor Aisha Hassan is among the millions of people newly displaced last year.

The doctor said that when she arrived for work at a hospital to tend to those injured in the country’s ongoing civil war, she faced threats from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and gangs. The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese armed forces since April of last year.

The threat forced her to leave her patients and her city, Omdurman, northwest of the capital Khartoum. Hassan said she and her family fled to safety.

“From there I went to North Sudan Al-Shimaliyya, it’s called Karima. We stayed there for three months, and my family and I went to Port Sudan. From there we displaced here to Uganda,” she said.

Fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF has displaced 9.1 million since April 2023, making Sudan the country with the most displaced people globally.

According to the IDMC, the number marks “the most ever recorded in a single country since records began in 2008.”