120 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to war conflicts | The Basque Journal

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has denounced this Thursday the “apathy” and “inaction” on the part of the international community in the face of the rise in forced displacement, which already affects 120 million people around the world and It especially burdens the populations of war zones such as Sudan, Burma or the Gaza Strip.

In its report ‘Global Forced Displacement Trends’, UNHCR has indicated that these cases require “urgent” actions to end these trends. Thus, he has warned that for twelve consecutive years there have been increases in the global figures of forced displacement.

In this sense, he has pointed out that the increase throughout 2024 is due both to the consequences of new and existing conflicts and to the inability to resolve prolonged crises. Based on this data, if the globally displaced population were a country, it would be the twelfth largest in the world, roughly the size of Japan.

Thus, he explained that a factor that has been decisive in the increase in numbers has been the devastating conflict in Sudan: since April 2023, more than 7.1 million new internal displacements have been registered and more than 1.9 million outward movements.

Burma and Congo

By the end of 2023, a total of 10.8 million Sudanese had been forced to move within and outside the country. In addition, millions of people have also been displaced in Burma and the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to violent clashes that have taken place over the past year.

On the other hand, at the end of 2023 there were 1.7 million people who had to be displaced in the Gaza Strip, which represents 75% of the population. Among those displaced in the area are Palestinian refugees who have had to abandon their homes on more than one occasion.

In this sense, Syria continues to host the largest crisis of its kind in the world, with 13.8 million displaced. «Behind these stark figures, which continue to rise, countless human tragedies are hidden. The suffering must prompt the international community to act urgently to address the causes of forced displacement,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

«It is time for the parties in conflict to respect International Law and the basic laws of war. The reality is that, without greater cooperation and joint efforts to address conflict, human rights violations or the climate crisis, displacement numbers will continue to increase, leading to more suffering and costly humanitarian responses,” he said. regretted.

Data collected by UNHCR indicates that children make up 40 percent of the world’s displaced population despite the fact that they constitute 30 percent of the global population.

The effects of conflicts

The most pronounced increase in these figures is related to armed conflicts and internally displaced people. According to data from the Internal Displacement Observatory (IDMC), this represents an increase of almost 50% in five years.

The report indicates that the number of refugees and other people in need of international protection amounted to 43.4 million, taking into account those under the mandates of UNHCR and UNRWA. A large part of the refugee population (69%) has been welcomed by the countries closest to their own, and 75% reside in low- or middle-income countries that, together, produce less than 20% of world income.

The data shows that among the countries that receive the highest number of asylum applications are the United States, Germany, Egypt, Spain and Canada, among others. However, in terms of population density, Aruba, Lebanon, Montenegro, Curacao and Jordan are the countries with the highest number of displaced people – one in five people are displaced.

According to UNHCR, more than five million internally displaced people and one million refugees returned to their homes during 2023, figures that show some progress towards longer-term solutions.

«Refugees and the communities that host them need solidarity and a helping hand. “All of them can contribute to society, and indeed they do, when there is inclusion,” said Grandi, who clarified that “in 2023, millions of people returned to their homes, which fuels hope.”

“There are solutions: we have seen countries like Kenya lead the inclusion of refugees, but a real commitment is needed,” says the text, which offers a new analysis of the climate crisis and establishes the possible effects on the displaced.

In total, UNHCR estimates that 4.4 million people are stateless, although another 565,900 have achieved citizenship in a country since the agency launched a program in this regard in 2014.