The number of internally displaced people has more than doubled worldwide between 2013 and 2022

71 million people were forced to flee their place of origin without crossing an international border in 2022, revealed Thursday, May 11 the NGO International Displacement Monitoring Center to the International Direction of Radio France. In 2013, there were 33 million people displaced within their own country due to conflict or environmental disaster.

In one year, the number of internally displaced persons has increased by 20%. The NGO thus counted 59.1 million displaced persons in 2011. This sharp increase in one year can be largely explained by the war in Ukraine, according to Alexandra Bilak, director of IDMC. “The region of Europe that is usually barely visible on our world map has grown much larger because of this conflict”she explains.

Many movements caused by the war in Ukraine

Alexandra Bilak believes in “almost 6 million people” the number of internally displaced persons in Ukraine, with “families who have had to move repeatedly”. “It generated a very large number of movements recorded over a year, more than 14 million”adds the director of the IDMC.

2022 is also a dark year in terms of displacement linked to environmental disasters, warns the NGO. Its director Alexandra Bilak mentions in particular “the floods in Pakistan, the great drought in the Horn of Africa” ​​which led to a large number of displacements in 2022. The countries of the North are not or no longer spared by this phenomenon. At the end of last year, more than 540,000 people were displaced in the United States, mainly due to the wildfires and hurricanes that hit the country.