flee their homes, though the number of displaced people declined by about 700,000 in 2008, the report said. Recent fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Somalia last year brought total displacement in each to 1.5 million and 1.3 million, respectively. More than 2 million internally displaced people were in Sudan's Darfur region, according to the report. When a genocide targeting Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 later spilled over into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rose Mapendo, a Tutsi, was caught in the middle. She spoke at the event and described her ordeal. Mapendo, her husband and seven children were thrown into a death camp, where her husband was executed and her children starved, she said through tears. While at the prison, she learned that she was pregnant. She gave birth in silence, on a concrete floor, Mapendo said. To her surprise, she had twins, and to her captorssurprise, she named her newborns after them. Soon after her gesture toward the prison commanders, her family was freed after their 16-month ordeal. Mapendo, named a CNN Hero in October, created Mapendo International, a nonprofit dedicated to identifying, saving and resettling endangered refugees. She was named humanitarian of the year at the event by the U.N. agency. I want to encourage the refugees do n't give up, she said. Giving up is not an option. CNN's Khadijah Rentas,