A record number of people are now internally displaced. What does this mean and why are numbers rising so fast?

Imagine suddenly having to leave behind your home, your possessions and your community to flee to another part of your country. This is the stark reality facing a record number of people.

Those facing such a fate are known as internally displaced people (IDP). This term covers anyone who is forced to leave their home because of issues such as conflicts, human rights violations and natural disasters, but who doesn’t have to cross an international border to find safety.

Not crossing a border means IDPs are technically not refugees. But both groups still have to endure the trauma of displacement when forced to flee war or disaster – or sometimes both.

There are many reasons why internally displaced people remain in their homeland. Some may want to stay close to home, hoping that the situation improves. For others there is less of a choice – they may lack the physical strength or means to pay to travel to another country, or they may be within a conflict zone and prevented from leaving.

Globally, 71.1 million people were internally displaced at the end of 2022. That’s a 20% year-on-year increase and an all-time high, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s (IDMC) Global Report on Internal Displacement 2023.

Unlike refugees, IDPs do not have a special status in international law. Instead they must rely on the government of the country they are in to protect them from the fallout of conflict, famine or other threats. However, some governments are unable or unprepared to do this.

This is why the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) sees IDPs as among the most vulnerable displaced persons in the world.

Disasters accounted for more than half of internal displacements in 2022, with extreme weather exacerbated by climate change forcing almost 32 million people to leave their home.

More than 19 million disaster displacements – 6 in every 10 – were triggered by severe floods. This happened most notably in Pakistan – where the world’s largest disaster displacement for a decade took place – and the Philippines.

Other countries most impacted by severe floods, storms, cyclones, droughts and weather extremes included China, India and Nigeria.

While almost half of the disasters caused fewer than 100 people to be displaced, the combined effect of the high volume of events had a significant impact.

Conflict and violence was the second leading cause of internal displacements in 2022. These events displaced 28.3 million people, almost double the previous year’s total.

The numbers included 16.9 million uprooted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the highest level ever recorded for an individual country. Ukraine accounted for 60% of global conflict displacements.

Other war-torn countries with the highest levels of internal displacement included the Democratic Republic of the Congo with more than 4 million, Ethiopia with around 2 million, Myanmar with around 1 million and Somalia with 620,000.

Overall, there was a threefold increase in conflict displacements in 2022 compared with the annual average for the past decade. As a result, by the end of the year a total of 62.5 million people were displaced due to war or violence.

While people in many parts of the world are impacted, nearly three-quarters of all internally displaced people live in just 10 countries: Syria, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Sudan.

The global increase in displacements together with the impact of conflicts and disasters, have increased food insecurity, the report notes. Despite gaps in the availability of data, the two are clearly interlinked, it says.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s leading grain and fertilizer producers, and the war between them has seriously impacted the availability of both for use in agricultural production, for example.

Conflicts and natural disasters are seen as a major short-term threats facing the world, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023. It ranks natural disasters and extreme weather events as the second greatest risk in the coming two years.

Today, there are approximately twice as many IDPs as refugees, according to UNHCR. Many are living in crowded makeshift camps or emergency shelters, with minimal access to basic necessities like healthcare, and little if any certainty about their future.

Alongside immediate humanitarian help, investment and support is needed to help internally displaced people resettle and rebuild their lives.