The war in Ukraine helped push the global total of people left internally displaced by conflict or natural disasters to a record high of 71.1 million last year, a report released yesterday by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center said.
By the end of last year, 5.9 million people had been forced to move inside Ukraine because of Russia’s invasion, bringing the global total of people internally displaced by conflict and violence to more than 62 million, an increase of 17 percent since 2021. Syria had 6.8 million people displaced by conflict after more than a decade of civil war.
The number of people displaced inside their country at the end of the year because of disasters such as floods and famine reached 8.7 million, up 45 percent from 2021.
Photo: REUTERS
The total of 71.1 million internally displaced worldwide represented a 20 percent increase since 2021.
Internal displacement refers to people forced to move inside their own borders, and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center’s report did not take into account those who left for different countries.
Following a year when conflict raged in Ukraine, Syria, Ethiopia and elsewhere, there has been no respite this year.
The UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration this week said that 700,000 people have already been internally displaced in a matter of weeks by the conflict in Sudan between the army and a rival paramilitary group.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center cited the La Nina weather phenomenon, which continued for a third consecutive year last year, as a major factor in disaster displacements.
It contributed to record levels of flood displacement in Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil, and to the worst drought on record in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the report said.
There was a “perfect storm” of conflict and natural disasters last year, leading to “displacement on a scale never seen before,” council secretary-general Jan Egeland said.
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