More Than 31 Million People Were Internally Displaced In 2016: Report
Crises of violence,
conflict and disaster caused more than 31 million people to flee their homes in
2016. That’s about one person internally displaced per second, a new joint
report from the Norwegian
Refugee Council and Internal
Displacement Monitoring Centre reveals. There are currently
twice as many internally displaced persons, or IDPs, as refugees
worldwide, but the issue of internal displacement remains largely neglected on
the global policy agenda, the organizations warned Monday. Many people who flee
their countries as refugees are later forced to return home, only to become
displaced internally, the report said. Last year, natural
disaster was by far the largest source of displacement.
Violence and conflict
together resulted in nearly 7 million new cases, at a rate of about 15,000 per
day. This included some 922,000 cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 824,000 in Syria and
659,000 in Iraq. The global population of such IDPs has been on
the rise since 2003, and now exceeds 40 million. Natural disasters led
to a sobering 24.2 million internal displacements in 2016, including more than
7.4 million in China, 5.9 million in the
Philippines and 2.4 million in India. In countries like Nigeria, South
Sudan and Somalia, the combined detrimental effects of disaster and
violent conflict are fueling rapid displacement and extreme food shortages.
Did you know that
most people displaced by conflict are displaced in their home country?
The NRC and IDMC
stress that insufficient monitoring practices make it impossible to reflect the
true scale, nature and patterns of the global internal displacement phenomenon.
The humanitarian groups identify issues like poverty, inequality, weak systems of
governance, rapid urbanization, climate change and environmental degradation as
some of the primary triggers of forced displacement. “Significant new
internal displacement associated with conflict and disasters takes place every
year, mainly in low and lower-middle income countries,” the report said. “Those
affected join the many millions of people already living in displacement,
reflecting the intractable nature of the phenomenon, and the inability of
governments to cope.”
Without adequate
attention and response to the underlying factors driving internal displacement
around the globe, these numbers will continue to rise, the report warns. It
calls on members of the international community to commit to “a conscious,
deliberate and sustained political effort to improve the many millions of lives
blighted by internal displacement and preventing others from suffering the same
upheaval and trauma in the future.”
see also
