By Elizabeth Blunt BBC, London

Kurd refugees in Iraq - but the war did not create the exodus many feared

A report by the Global IDP Project says refugees who cross borders tend to get more attention - but nearly twice that number are internally displaced.

Their condition is often worse, the Geneva-based body says.

It reports that the number of refugees worldwide has stayed roughly constant over the past year.

The agency monitors the constantly fluctuating numbers of people forced out of their homes and the others who return.

While three million people were able to go home last year - mostly in Angola and Indonesia - another three million were forced out.

'War on terror' concerns

The biggest single new displacement was in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

However, substantial numbers were also displaced in Uganda, Liberia, Colombia, Central Africa, Indonesia and the Philippines.

In Sudan, while some families were going home in the south, others were being driven out of their villages in the western Darfur region.

Sudan has more internally displaced people than anywhere else in the world - four million, at the latest count.

The Project says the best news last year was that the Iraq war did not, as had been feared, displace large numbers of people.

But it expresses concern that America's so-called war on terror might have made matters worse by encouraging governments to seek military solutions to conflicts.

The Project says the precedent set by the US-led campaign may further allow governments to escape international scrutiny by labelling their opponents "terrorists" and claiming that counter-insurgency operations are justified as part of the international fight against terrorism.