HQ Team
May 15, 2024: At least 75.9 million people were forced to flee their homes due to conflict, violence or disasters within their state’s borders in 2023, according to a UN report.
Last year, 47 million new internal displacements occurred worldwide across 151 countries and territories, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s Global Report on Internal Displacement 2024.
All but three of the 45 countries and territories that reported conflict, displacement last year also reported disaster displacement. The 148 countries and territories reporting disaster displacement include high-income countries such as Canada and New Zealand which reported their highest figures ever.
“As the planet grapples with conflicts and disasters, the staggering numbers of 47 million new internal displacements tells a harrowing tale,” said Ugochi Daniels, director-general of the UN International Organisation for Migration, which supplied data for the report.
Protect human rights
“This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peace-building, ensure the protection of human rights and whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens,” she said.
Internally displaced people are those who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict, violence, or disasters and who have not crossed an internationally recognised state border.
This figure continues to rise as more people flee each year, adding to the numbers of those who have been living in displacement for years or even decades and have not yet achieved a durable solution.
Conflict and violence were primarily responsible for displacement, uprooting some 20.5 million people in 2023. Nearly 30% of these occurred in Sudan.
Cyclones, earthquakes
Natural disasters also continued to drive millions from their homes.
In 2023, disasters such as Cyclone Freddy in southeast Africa, earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria and Cyclone Mocha in the Indian Ocean led to 26.4 million displacements, making up 56% of the total new internal displacements.
There was an increase in disaster-induced displacements in high-income countries, such as Canada’s unprecedented wildfire season, which caused 185,000 internal displacements.
Sub-Saharan Africa, which hosts 46 per cent of the world’s IDPs, was again the region most affected by internal displacement in 2023.
The scale and impacts of internal displacement can differ depending on the context.
Preparation
The transition from La Niña to El Niño reduced the scale of storm displacement in East Asia and the Pacific and at the same time triggered significant flood displacement in the Horn of Africa.
The conflict in Gaza left 83% of the population internally displaced in less than three months at the end of 2023.
“No country is immune to disaster displacement, but we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare for its impacts and those that don’t,” said Alexandra Bilak, Director, of IDMC.
