In 2022, there were over 71 million internally displaced people in the world, a record.

New record. In 2022, 71.1 million people were registered as internally displaced, up 20% from the previous year, driven by a mass exodus following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as catastrophic floods in Pakistan, according to a joint report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center ( IDMC). ) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The number of newly displaced persons has risen to almost 61 million, some of whom have been forced to flee several times. This is 60% more than in 2021. The number is “extremely high,” IDMC head Alexandra Bilak told AFP. “Most of the growth is driven, of course, by the war in Ukraine, as well as the floods in Pakistan, new and ongoing conflicts around the world, and a number of sudden or slowly developing disasters that we have seen. from America to the Pacific,” she explained.

17 million trips in Ukraine

Last year, the number of new internally displaced people due to conflict soared to 28.3 million, almost double the previous year and three times the average for the past decade. In addition to the 17 million people displaced within Ukraine, eight million people have been displaced from their homes by the horrendous floods in Pakistan. And sub-Saharan Africa has recorded about 16.5 million internal displacements, more than half of which are conflict-related, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia.

A further increase in the number of IDPs is expected this year. In Sudan, fighting since mid-April has already forced more than 700,000 people to flee to other parts of the country. “Since the start of the most recent (…) conflict in April, we have already recorded the same number of displacements as in all of 2022,” Ms Bilak said. “Obviously, this is a very unstable situation on the ground,” she said.

Natural disasters, the main culprits

Although people are forced to flee around the world, nearly three-quarters of internally displaced people live in just 10 countries: Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan (in descending order of the number of IDPs).

Many of these displaced people are victims of conflicts that have lasted for years, but natural disasters are the cause of most new internal displacements. They forced 32.6 million people to flee in 2022. This is 40% more than a year earlier.

For the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Jan Egeland, this conglomeration of crises is a “perfect storm”. “Conflict and natural disasters over the past year have combined to exacerbate pre-existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, causing displacement on a scale never seen before,” he said in a statement. He also denounced the global food crisis, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which “undermined years of progress.”