Conflicts and natural disasters forced tens of millions to flee within their own country last year, pushing the number of internally displaced people to a record high, monitors said yesterday.
About 59.1 million people were registered as internally displaced worldwide last year — an all-time record expected to be broken again this year amid mass displacement in war-torn Ukraine.
About 38 million new internal displacements were reported last year, with some people forced to flee multiple times during the year, a joint report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
That marks the second-highest annual number of new internal displacements in a decade after 2020, which saw record-breaking movement due to a string of natural disasters.
Last year, new internal displacements from conflict surged to 14.4 million — marking a 50 percent jump from 2020 and more than doubling since 2012, the report showed.
Global internal displacement figures are only expected to grow this year, driven in particular by the war in Ukraine. More than 8 million people have already been displaced within the war-ravaged country since Russia’s full-scale invasion began on Feb. 24, in addition to the more than 6 million who have fled Ukraine as refugees.
“The world is falling apart,” NRC secretary-general Jan Egeland told reporters. “The situation today is phenomenally worse than even our record figure suggests.”
Last year, sub-Saharan Africa counted the most internal movements, with more than 5 million displacements reported in Ethiopia alone as the country grappled with the raging and expanding Tigray conflict and a devastating drought.
That marks the highest figure ever registered for a single country.
Unprecedented displacement numbers were also recorded last year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s return to power, along with drought, saw many flee their homes.
In Myanmar, where the military junta seized power in a February coup last year, displacement numbers also reached a record high, the report found.
Syria, where civil war has been raging for more than 11 years, still accounted for the world’s highest number of people living in internal displacement due to conflict — 6.7 million — at the end of last year.
Despite the hike in conflict-related displacement, natural disasters continued to account for most new internal displacement, spurring 23.7 million such movements last year.
A full 94 percent of those were attributed to weather and climate-related disasters, such as cyclones, monsoon rains, floods and droughts.
China, the Philippines and India were hardest hit, together accounting for about 70 percent of all disaster-related displacements last year.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US