A astonishing amount of 120 million people are forcefully displaced by conflict, violence, and persecution, the UN said Thursday, describing the ever-increasing figure a “terrible indictment on the state of the world”.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that forced displacement has once again broken records, with wars in Gaza, Sudan, and Myanmar causing even more people to escape their homes.
The global displaced population is now equal to Japan’s, according to a statement.
“Conflict remains a very, very big driver of mass displacement,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi told reporters.
According to a UNHCR report, 117.3 million people were displaced as of the end of last year.
By the end of April, the figure had risen even higher, with an estimated 120 million people worldwide living in displacement.
The figure is up from 110 million a year ago and has risen for 12 years in a row, virtually tripling since 2012 due to a combination of new and evolving crises as well as a failure to settle long-standing ones, according to UNHCR.
Grandi told AFP that when he started the position eight years ago, he was taken aback by the large displacement figure.
Since then it has “more than doubled”, he said, describing this as “a terrible indictment on the state of the world”.
Figures will keep rising
Grandi identified a noticeable increase in crises, as well as how climate change is influencing population movement and increasing conflict.
Last year, UNHCR declared 43 emergencies in 29 countries, more than four times the number just a few years before, he told reporters.
In particular, Grandi noted “the way conflicts are conducted … in complete disregard” of international law, and “often with the specific purpose of terrorising people”.
“This of course is a powerful contributor to more displacement.”
Grandi acknowledged there currently seemed to be little hope of bucking the trend.
“Unless there is a shift in international geopolitics, unfortunately, I actually see the figure continuing to go up,” he said.
Of the 117.3 million displaced at the end of 2023, 68.3 million people were internally displaced within their own country, Thursday’s report showed.
The number of refugees and others in need of international protection meanwhile climbed to 43.4 million, it said.
UNHCR countered the perception that all refugees and other migrants go to wealthy countries.
“The vast majority of refugees are hosted in countries neighbouring their own, with 75 per cent residing in low- and middle-income countries that together produce less than 20 per cent of the world’s income,” it said.
‘Human tragedies’
Sudan’s civil war has been a key factor driving up the numbers.
Since the war broke out in April 2023 between rival generals, it has displaced more than nine million more people, leaving nearly 11 million Sudanese uprooted at the end of 2023, UNHCR said.
The numbers were still rising.
Grandi pointed to the many still fleeing to neighbouring Chad, which has received some 600,000 Sudanese in the past 14 months.
“Hundreds and hundreds every day are crossing from one devastated country to one of the poorest countries in the world,” he told AFP.
Last year, violent violence forced millions more people to flee their homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar.
And the UN believes that the Gaza Strip’s war, which began eight months ago with Hamas’ October 7 strike inside Israel, has displaced 1.7 million people, or 75 percent of the population.
Regarding the war occurring in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the UN projected that over 750,000 people were newly displaced within the country every year, with a total of 3.7 million internally displaced individuals reported by the end of 2023.
The number of Ukrainian refugees and asylum applicants has risen by more than 275,000 to six million, according to the report.
Syria continues to be the world’s worst displacement catastrophe, with 13.8 million people forcibly displaced both within and beyond the country, according to UNHCR.