More people were internally displaced by disasters than by war and conflict, according to a recent report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), an offshoot of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Nearly 61 million new internal displacements, or movements, were registered in 2022, according to a newly released Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) report, a 60 per cent increase compared to the previous year. This figure is the highest ever reported, and shows the volume of not just new displacements, but also repeated ones.

By the end of 2022, a total of 71.1 million people were living in internal displacement, a state in which they have been forced to flee their homes but not crossed an international border. It marks the highest number on record and a 20% increase on the previous year.

This indicates that extreme weather events, worsened by climate change, are affecting people across the world. More people were internally displaced by disasters than by war and conflict, even in the year that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced millions of people to flee their homes

Across the world 32.6 million people were internally displaced by natural disasters, with almost all—98%—of those displacements caused by weather events like floods, droughts, and storms.

The IDMC doesn’t claim climate change caused all those displacements. Yet, its detailed 76-page report contains numerous examples of weather events deemed by expert analysis to have been caused or worsened by climate change, such as the disastrous 2022 floods in Pakistan, and particularly destructive wildfires in the US and Europe.

How many people were internally displaced by wars and conflict?

According to the report,  28.3 million people internally displaced due to war and conflict in 2022, including in Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Ukraine war triggered 16.9 million internal displacements in 2022, the highest number ever recorded for one country, according to the IDMC report.

Nearly three-quarters of the world’s internally displaced people live in just 10 countries: Syria, Afghanistan, the DRC, Ukraine, Colombia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan, the report noted.

The nature of last year’s events have also led to “overlapping” crises, particularly around food supplies, the IDMC said.

 Russia and Ukraine’s positions as some of the main global suppliers of wheat and fertilizer, for example meant that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia deeply impacted food supplies and prices elsewhere, while the continuing effects of the covid-19 pandemic, and associated supply chain problems, continued to impact food availability.

 Extreme weather events were also a huge contributor to food insecurity.

“Conflict and disasters combined last year to aggravate people’s pre-existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, triggering displacement on a scale never seen before,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which set up IDMC in 1998.

Every year, millions of people are displaced because of disasters. Last year, disasters including the floods in Pakistan and typhoon Noru in the Philippines led to 32.6 million internal displacements, the highest ever recorded. The number is expected to rise as the frequency, duration and intensity of natural hazards worsens in the context of climate change. The World Bank has projected that as many as 216 million people could become internal climate migrants by 2050, if concerted climate action is not taken.

The report  offers suggestions for how richer countries can help. Cash assistance is top of the list, followed by help for internally displaced people to develop skills and livelihoods, investment to strengthen communities’ resilience to disasters natural and manmade, and collecting better data to truly understand who is being forced to leave their home, and why.

REPORT PREPARED BY NEWSNET INTERN SIMON MARBANIANG

  climate change, development, disaster management, e Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), refugees