CENTRAL NEWS – According to research by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), 59.1 million people were internally displaced in 2021. It was stated that nearly half of these were people under the age of 18.
The research does not take into account refugees abroad. While internal migration is increasing year by year, a new record is expected in 2022 due to the Ukraine war.
Nearly 60 million internal migration shows the second highest level of the last ten years.
“The year 2022 looks like it will be dark,” said Alexandra Bilak, Director of IDMC. According to the UN, more than 8 million people had to displace within the country due to the Ukraine war that started in February.
NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland, who held a press conference in Geneva with Bilak, stated that the situation in the world has never been this bad and said, “The world is collapsing”.
“Today, the situation is actually incredibly worse than the record numbers suggest. To end the escalation of human suffering, we need world leaders to make a massive shift in thinking about conflict avoidance and conflict resolution,” Egeland added.
Last year, Sub-Saharan Africa was the region with the highest internal migration. In Ethiopia alone, more than 5 million people were exposed to migration due to severe drought and conflicts. This figure represents the largest migration within a country in a year. Unprecedented movements in internal migration also took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan. The return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, combined with the drought, increased the number of people fleeing their homes.
While internal migration reached a record level in Myanmar, where the soldiers seized power with a coup, the Middle East and North Africa experienced the lowest internal migration in the last ten years.
Although the conflicts in Syria, Libya and Iraq have decreased to a certain extent, the total number of internally displaced persons in the region is still at high levels. Syria remains the country with the highest number of internally displaced people, with a total of 6.7 million people as of the end of 2021.
Syria is followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo with 5.3 million people and Colombia with 5.2 million people. In each of Afghanistan and Yemen, 4.3 million people are internally displaced.
Although the number of people exposed to internal migration due to conflicts is still very high, natural disasters are one of the main reasons for people to flee their homes. Last year, 23.7 million people were internally displaced due to natural disasters. In total, 70 percent of the internal migration associated with natural disasters in 2021 were recorded in China, the Philippines and India. However, Egeland warned that increasingly conflicts and natural disasters go hand in hand.
In countries such as Mozambique, Myanmar, Somalia and South Sudan, crises are piling up. These crises are having an impact on nutritional security and exacerbating the vulnerability of millions.
