Yemen Monitor/News Room
Conflicts in Sudan, Gaza Strip and the Democratic Republic of the Congo pushed the number of internally displaced people to a record 75.9 million at the end of 2023, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
The number of internally displaced people has increased by 50% in the last five years, according to the annual report of this NGO, which was released on Tuesday in Geneva.
There were 71.1 million internally displaced people at the end of 2022.
Unlike refugees who leave their country’s borders, internally displaced people are forced to move from one place to another within the country they live in.
In its Global Report on Internal Displacement, the center said that 68.3 million people worldwide were displaced by conflict and violence and 7.7 million by disasters.
In the last five years, the number of internally displaced people due to conflicts has increased by an estimated 22.6 million, with a significant increase particularly in 2022 and 2023.
With 9.1 million internally displaced people, Sudan has the largest number of internally displaced people in a single country since records began in 2008, according to the IDMC.
Nearly half of the internally displaced people live in sub-Saharan Africa.
“In the last two years, we have seen worrying new levels of people being forced to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in areas that had seen an improvement in this trend,” said IDMC Director Alexandra Bilak.
“The conflicts and the destruction they leave behind prevent millions from rebuilding their lives for years, sometimes,” she added.
Fighting in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Gaza Strip accounted for about two-thirds of the new internally displaced people due to conflict in 2023.
