Almost 60 million people displaced worldwide, study finds

The number of people displaced within their own borders rose to an all-time high by the end of last year, with a total at least 59.1 million people having left their homes, a new study has shown.

According to data collated by the internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), this has been as a result of violence or disasters.

This is up from the 55 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) recorded in the IDMC’s previous annual world survey and includes high numbers of new IDPs in Afghanistan, Burkino Faso, Ethiopia and Yemen, the IDMC said.

More than half of all IDPs are now under the age of 25, while 25.2 million of this group are under the age of 18, raising significant questions about the effects of global instability on younger generations.

Of all the internal displacements driven by conflict and violence last year, 80 per cent of them occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa due to fighting in places including the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Somalia.

Commenting on the report, Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which set up the IDMC 24 years ago to document IDPs who would otherwise go “unseen”, said the findings showed the world was in a state of ill health.

“The world is falling apart, too many countries are falling apart,” he said. “2021 was, as we documented here, a very bleak year and 2022 is proving to become even worse,” he said, adding that the war in Ukraine would lead to a new record this year.

These figures don’t include the millions displaced in the past two months in Ukraine.

Between the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion on 24 February and 5 May, the UN estimates that more than 6 million people fled Ukraine, while another 7.7 million people had become internally displaced.