Successive crises forced more than 71 million people to flee their homes within their own countries last year, in a new record.
A joint report by the International Displacement Monitoring Center 6 IDMC and the Norwegian Refugee Council said that 71.1 million internally displaced persons were registered in 2022.
This number represents a 20 percent increase from the previous year due to the mass displacement after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and also due to the catastrophic floods in Pakistan.
The number of newly displaced people rose to about 61 million people, some of whom had to flee several times, representing a 60 percent increase over 2021.
The head of the center, Alexandra Bellak, told AFP the figure was “very high”.
“A large part of this increase has certainly resulted from the war in Ukraine, but also from floods in Pakistan, new and ongoing conflicts around the world and a number of sudden or slow-motion disasters that we have seen from the Americas to the Pacific,” she noted.
Africa is badly affected
Last year, the number of people internally displaced by conflict rose to 28.3 million, double the number recorded in the previous year and three times the annual average over the past decade.
In addition to the 17 million people displaced within Ukraine, eight million people have been displaced from their homes by the massive floods in Pakistan.
In sub-Saharan Africa, about 16.5 million people were internally displaced, more than half of them due to conflicts, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia.
This year, the number of internally displaced persons is expected to rise again.
In Sudan, fighting since mid-April has forced more than 700,000 people to flee to other parts of the country.
“Since the beginning of the last conflict (…) in April, we have so far recorded a number of displaced persons equivalent to the displacement in all of 2022,” Bellak said.
“It is clear that it is a very unstable situation on the ground,” she added.
Ten countries
Although people have been forced to flee around the world, nearly three-quarters of the internally displaced live in just ten countries – Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan – in order of counting of the displaced.
Many of these displaced people are victims of years of conflict, but natural disasters are responsible for most new internal displacements, forcing 32.6 million people to flee in 2022. This represents a 40 percent increase over the previous year.
“This accumulation of crises is a perfect storm,” NRC President Jan Egeland said in a statement.
“Conflicts and disasters have combined over the past year to deepen pre-existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, causing displacement on an unprecedented scale,” he added.
He also condemned the global food crisis, which was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and “undermined years of progress”.
