Nearly 3 million people in Myanmar have been displaced from their homes, according to the U.N., with a majority of them fleeing conflict triggered by the 2021 military coup.

Around 2.7 million have fled since the putsch that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi's government after a short-lived experiment with democracy.

The coup sparked renewed clashes with established ethnic armed groups and birthed dozens of new "People's Defence Forces" that the military has failed to crush.

"Myanmar stands at the precipice in 2024 with a deepening humanitarian crisis," the U.N.'s resident coordinator in the country said in a statement released Monday.

An estimated one-third of those displaced are children, according to the statement.

Around half of the 3 million have been displaced since late last year when an alliance of ethnic armed groups launched an offensive across the northern Shan state, the statement said.

The offensive seized swathes of territory and lucrative trade crossings on the China border, posing the biggest threat to the junta since it seized power.

Myanmar's borderlands are home to a plethora of ethnic armed groups, many of whom have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 over autonomy and control of lucrative resources.

The U.N. said a severe funding shortfall was hampering its relief efforts, particularly ahead of the May-June cyclone season.

Last year cyclone Mocha smashed into western Myanmar's Rakhine state, killing at least 148 people.

More than 355,000 people are currently displaced in western Rakhine state, which has been rocked since November by clashes between the Arakan Army (AA) and the military, the U.N. said.

Back in 2018, over a million Rohingya Muslims, one of Myanmar's largest minority groups, fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape persecution under the then-democratic government.