Global reports have noted disproportionately high numbers of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) as the figure has grown 50% in the last five years due to conflicts and environmental crises, according to recent data from the Internally Displaced Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Over the past year, the conflict in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Palestine contributed nearly two-thirds of new conflict movements. A total of 75.9 million IDPs were recorded by the end of 2023.
Out of the record-breaking total, over 68 million were displaced due to conflict and violence. Director of IDMC, Alexandra Bilak, said the data they collected from 2023 “is just the tip of the iceberg,” as wide-scale conflicts intensify.
As conflict rages on in Sudan, the African country had 9.1 million people displaced by the end of 2023, the most that has ever been recorded.
“Over the past two years, we’ve seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving,” said Bilak. One of the major issues is the devastation left after the conflict “It is keeping millions from re-building their lives, often for years on end,” the director added.
It is not only violence that is forcing people from their homes, natural disasters triggered 26.4 million displacements in 2023, making it the third-highest annual total in ten years.
Although lower-income countries such as those in sub-Saharan Africa are home to almost half of IDPs, higher-income countries such as Canada and New Zealand noted record-breaking disaster displacement figures.
Bilak stated: “No country is immune to disaster displacement. But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don’t.”
Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council said the sky-high numbers “is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peace-making.”
It is becoming increasingly difficult for IDPs to resettle in continents like Europe, as the bloc puts more measures in place to offload its refugee and asylum-seeker populations.
The European Agency for Asylum’s most recent data from February 2024 shows that only a handful of asylum seeker applications are usually granted resettlement. For example, out of the 8,466 Afghanistan applications, only 164 have been resettled in Europe. Similarly out of 1,030 DRC asylum seekers, only 168 have moved to Europe.