section_path: Further developments/Displacement
section_name: Displacement
paragraph_text: Displacement
  
  The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that more than 6,000 people had fled across the border into northern Lebanon by 11 March. The United Nations Population Fund estimated on 14 March that 51,000 civilians had been displaced due to the violence, including 6,000 in Lebanon.
  
  A Reuters investigation published at the end of April reported that since January hundreds and possibly thousands of people, mostly Alawites, had been evicted from their homes in Damascus suburbs, sometimes at gunpoint, in many cases by gunmen affiliated to the General Security Service. Syrian human rights groups such as Syrians for Truth and Justice, government officials and Alawite residents had told Reuters that most had been in government housing attached to state jobs they no longer had, but that hundreds were in private residences evicted in "sectarian score-settling", often to rehouse displaced families returning from Idlib.