The stories of the hundreds of thousands of refugees, migrants and
asylum-seekers, who have risked their lives to reach European shores in
search of a safe haven, have drawn much attention to the phenomenon of
displacement; but they represent only a fraction of a more complex
issue, according to a new report, which highlights the global crisis of
internal displacement.
Conflict, violence and disasters internally
displaced 27.8 million people in 2015, taking the total number of
internally displaced people (IDPs) last year to a record 40.8 million,
the report released Wednesday by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), said.
“There
are now twice as many internally displaced people as refugees
worldwide,” Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC),
said in a statement. “IDPs often lose everything when they flee, and the
trauma and upheaval of displacement leave many with deep psychological
and physical scars.”
Some 8.6 million IDPs in 2015 — an average of
24,000 a day — were linked to conflict, including 4.8 million in the
Middle East and North Africa. Other nations with the highest number of
people fleeing were Ukraine, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Afghanistan, Colombia, Central African Republic and South Sudan.
The report also said that disasters displaced about 19.2 million
people across 113 countries in 2015, more than twice the number who fled
conflict and violence during the same year. India, China and Nepal had
the highest numbers, with 3.7 million, 3.6 million and 2.6 million,
respectively.
“Displacement in the Middle East and north Africa
has snowballed since the wave of social uprisings known as the Arab
Spring in late 2010 and the rise of the Islamic State [group],” with
Yemen,
Syria and
Iraq accounting for more than half of the global total, the report said.
The
total number of new displacements last year “is the equivalent of the
combined populations of New York City, London, Paris and Cairo grabbing
what they can carry, often in a state of panic, and setting out on a
journey filled with uncertainty,”
Egeland said. “Put another way, around 66,000 people abandoned their homes every day of 2015.”
The
report also measured the number of people displaced by criminal
violence associated with drug trafficking and gang activity, displacing
at least a million people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico
as of December 2015.
“Studies have established a direct link
between criminal violence and migration, but such displacement in the
region tends to remain unquantified and unaddressed for reasons ranging
from political to methodological,” the report said.
Read more: Conflicts, Disasters Displaced Nearly 28 Million People Worldwide In 2015, Report Shows
