2023-05-11 19:13:42
A “perfect storm”is how the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, describes the accumulation of crises – from the conflict in Ukraine to the floods in Pakistan to the food crisis – which have led to a new record in the number of internally displaced people in 2022.
According to a joint report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), 71 million people were forced into exile in their own country in 2022, a jump of 20% compared to the previous year. This figure therefore does not take into account people fleeing their country.
Internal displacement reaches “a scale never seen before”, emphasize the two organizations. “Much of the increase is caused, of course, by the war in Ukraine, but also by the floods in Pakistan, by new and ongoing conflicts around the world, and by a number of sudden or slow-moving disasters. that we have seen from the Americas to the Pacific”, assures the head of the IDMC, Alexandra Bilak. The reason: strong episodes of drought which have increased food insecurity.
Ten countries for three quarters of the displaced
The number of people displaced by natural disasters has doubled in 2022. Eight million people were driven from their homes by monster floods in Pakistan last summer.
If people are forced to flee all over the world, ten countries concentrate nearly three quarters of the internally displaced: Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan (in descending order of the number of IDPs).
In Ukraine, following the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, more than eleven million people fled their homes while remaining in the country. Almost half were able to return to their homes. However, there are still six million internally displaced persons.
Twelve years after the start of the conflict in Syria, nearly 7 million people have fled and found refuge in another part of the country. Most of the internally displaced Syrians live in the rebel-held region of Idlib in northeast Syria. The country at war holds the record for massive population displacements.
In Yemen, where war has been raging since 2015, one in eight residents has fled their homes. The country has 4,500,000 internally displaced people, half of whom still reside in a conflict zone.
In Afghanistan, more than 4 million people have fled their homes due to fighting and two million left after natural disasters.
Africa hard hit
Sub-Saharan Africa has recorded around 16.5 million internal displacements, more than half of them due to conflict, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where there are nearly six million displaced people, mainly from the east. from the country. In Ethiopia, there are nearly four million, following the conflict in Tigray.
This year, the number of IDPs could increase further. In Sudan, there were already 3,500,000 internally displaced people at the end of 2022. Fighting raging since mid-April between the army and paramilitaries has already forced more than 700,000 people to flee elsewhere in the country. “Since the start of the most recent conflict in April, we have already recorded the same number of displacements as for the whole of 2022,” notes Alexandra Bilak.
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