In 2020, more than 55 million people had to flee within their own country. That’s more than one person per second. A sad record observed by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), two NGOs which take stock of these tragedies. Despite travel restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, 40.5 million people have joined the ranks of internally displaced people, the highest number for ten years, the two organizations said. “These two numbers were unusually high,” said Alexandra Bilak, director of IDMC, to Agence France-Presse, saying that this surge is “unprecedented”.
These internally displaced people are now twice as numerous as the 26 million refugees who cross an international border in an attempt to find safety. “It’s shocking that someone has been forced to flee their home within their own country every second over the past year,” NRC boss Jan Egeland said in a statement. “We are showing ourselves incapable of protecting the most vulnerable from conflicts and disasters,” he added.
The Covid-19 has worsened this crisis
But, although it is a record number, it is undoubtedly below the reality, explains Alexandra Bilak. The pandemic has made it difficult to collect data and may have prompted more people to avoid shelters for fear of becoming infected. But the pandemic has also worsened the socio-economic situation of these displaced people and “this number could grow even more as countries sink into the crisis”, warned Alexandra Bilak.
The report points out that three quarters of the internally displaced have been forced to flee due to a natural disaster, especially extreme weather events.
Cyclones, monsoons, torrential rains and flooding hit densely populated areas in Asia and the Pacific, and a bumper hurricane season in the Atlantic also forced people to flee for shelter. In the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, prolonged rains have taken their toll.
Climate change is expected to amplify this scourge from year to year
“We can only expect that the future impact of climate change will make these catastrophic events more frequent and more violent, and consequently to see the number of internally displaced people increase further,” predicted the IDMC official. . In addition, some 10 million internally displaced people have been forced to flee due to conflicts or explosions of violence, such as the war in Tigray, an Ethiopian region beset by devastating conflict, attacks by jihadists in northern Mozambique or Burkina Faso.
Endless wars, such as in Syria, Afghanistan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also continue to force people to flee in numbers and often for a long time. While people fleeing natural disasters usually return home fairly quickly to rebuild, the same cannot be said for those fleeing war or violence. Their exile is generally much longer.
Of the 55 million displaced people, 38 million had fled fighting and violence, the report said. And, to make matters worse, 95% of displacements linked to new conflicts have occurred in countries vulnerable to climate change. “Climate change and the overexploitation of natural resources could exacerbate instability and conflicts and cause forced displacement,” add the NGOs.
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