More than 71mln people internally displaced worldwide in 2022: Reports

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A "perfect storm" of overlapping crises forced tens of millions to escape within their own country last year, sending the number of internally displaced people to a record high, monitors said on Thursday.

In 2022, there were a record-breaking 71.1 million internally displaced people (IDPs), up 20% from the previous year, as a result of the monsoon floods that drenched Pakistan and the war in Ukraine.

According to a joint report by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), 60.9 million new internal displacements were documented in 2022, with some people being forced to flee more than once.

That marks an all-time high for new internal displacements and an increase of 60% compared to the 38 million fresh displacements seen in 2021.

That number is "extremely high", IDMC chief Alexandra Bilak said, as quoted by AFP.

"Much of the increase is caused, of course, by the war in Ukraine, but also by floods in Pakistan, by new and ongoing conflicts across the world, and by a number of sudden and slow onset disasters that we've seen from the Americas all the way to the Pacific."

28.3 million people were forced to flee from their homes due to violence last year, a sharp increase from the year before and three times the average yearly number over the previous ten years.

Eight million people were forced out of their homes by Pakistan's devastating floods, in addition to the 17 million people who were displaced inside Ukraine last year.

Over half of the 16.5 million displaced people in Sub-Saharan Africa were a result of violence, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia.

Global internal displacement figures expected to grow 

The number of people internally displaced around the world is likely to increase this year, in part due to new conflicts like the turmoil wreaking havoc in Sudan that is pushing hundreds of thousands to escape.

More than 700,000 people have already become internally displaced by the fighting that erupted on April 15, while another 150,000 people have fled the country, as per UN numbers.

"Since the start of the... most recent conflict in April, we've already recorded the same number of displacements as we did for the whole year in 2022," Bilak said.

"Clearly, it's a very volatile situation on the ground," she said, pointing out that those being newly displaced by the fighting were joining the ranks of more than three million people already displaced across Sudan.

Read more: Sudan: A borderless conflict

Internal displacement is a worldwide issue, yet only ten nations—Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan—are home to roughly three-quarters of all IDPs. 

Due to ongoing hostilities that have persisted for years and continued to drive people from their homes last year, many of them remain displaced.

Natural catastrophes continued to cause the majority of new internal displacement even as conflict-related displacement increased, resulting in 32.6 million such moves in 2022 -- up 40% from the previous year.

NRC chief Jan Egeland described the overlapping crises spurring ever more displacement around the world as a "perfect storm".

"Conflict and disasters combined last year to aggravate people's pre-existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, triggering displacement on a scale never seen before," he said in a statement.

"The war in Ukraine also fuelled a global food security crisis that hit the internally displaced hardest," he said.

"This perfect storm has undermined years of progress made in reducing global hunger and malnutrition."

Read more: UNHCR: Globally displaced people due to conflict passes 100 mln