The number of internally displaced persons in the world reached a new high in 2022. According to figures from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council, more than 71 million people worldwide were forced to leave places where they lived. , even without leaving the country, an increase of 20% compared to the previous year.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was one of the events that forced the most people to leave their homes, with 17 million people fleeing the land where they lived. In Pakistan, catastrophic flooding in the country forced the displacement of more than eight million people.
IDMC director Alexandra Bilak told AFP that this figure is “extremely high.”
“A large part of the increase is, of course, due to the war in Ukraine, but also to the floods in Pakistan, new and existing conflicts around the world, and a series of flash-on or slow-moving disasters that we’ve seen from the Americas. to the Pacific,” he explained.
Last year, new internal displacements caused by conflicts reached 28.3 million, almost double the number in 2021 and triple the annual average of the last decade, figures that include the 17 million people who had to flee in the Ukrainian war.
The sub-Saharan Africa region recorded 16.5 million internal displacements, more than half due to conflict, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia. In Sudan, fighting that began in April forced 700,000 people to flee to other parts of the country.
“Since the start of the most recent conflict in April, we have recorded the same number of displacements as in all of 2022,” Bilak said.
Many people have been forced to flee in all regions of the planet, but almost 75% 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. .
Many of the displaced are victims of conflicts that last several years, but natural disasters are responsible for the majority of new internal displacement: 32.6 million people were forced to flee for this reason in 2022, 40% more than in 2021.
For the director of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, the different crises simultaneously generate a “perfect storm”.
“Conflict and disasters have combined over the past year to exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, causing displacement on a scale never seen before,” it said in a statement.
Source: TSF
