More than 71 million internally displaced people worldwide in 2022, a record

A new record. In 2022, 71.1 million people were registered as internally displaced, a 20% jump from the previous year caused by mass exoduses after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, according to a joint report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The number of newly displaced people jumped to almost 61 million, with some forced to flee repeatedly. This is 60% more than in 2021. The number is "extremely high," IDMC chief Alexandra Bilak told AFP. "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 disasters that we have seen from the Americas to the Pacific," she said.

17 million trips in Ukraine

Last year, new internal displacement due to conflict soared to 28.3 million, nearly double the previous year and three times higher than the annual average of the past decade. In addition to the 17 million displacements within Ukraine, eight million people have been driven from their homes by the massive floods in Pakistan. And sub-Saharan Africa has recorded an estimated 16.5 million internal displacements, more than half of them due to conflict, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.

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This year, the number of IDPs is expected to rise further. In Sudan, fighting since mid-April has already forced more than 700,000 people to flee elsewhere in the country. "Since the beginning of the (...) The most recent conflict in April, we have already recorded the same number of displacements as for all of 2022," Bilak said. "Obviously, it's a very volatile situation on the ground," she said.

Natural disasters, the main culprits

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

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

Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) chief Jan Egeland said the pile of crises was a "perfect storm". "Conflict and disaster combined over the past year 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, further exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which has "undermined years of progress".