Displaced people, The number is growing all over the world: they are now more than 71 million, fleeing conflicts or places unlivable due to climate change

ROME – The number of internally displaced people worldwide reached 71.1 million at the end of 2022, a 20 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Internal’s main annual report. Displacement Monitoring Centre. In general, the movements of people fleeing conflict zones or places where climate change has a particularly serious impact have increased. 2022 marked record figures: 60.9 million people on the move, or 60 percent more than in 2021. Wanting to make a further distinction, the number of people displaced by the war is 62.5 million, the one forced 8.7 million run away due to the effects of climate change.

The causes of the displacement. The war in Ukraine displaced 17 million, the floods in Pakistan 8.2 million, accounting for a quarter of global displacement. Prolonged conflicts and extreme climatic events, from droughts to floods, bring with them other problems such as food insecurity, lack of access to basic health services: all reasons why people are forced to move from the places where they usually live. In recent years, the phenomenon of continuous movement has worsened, i.e. people who run away several times, always looking for safe places to live.

Displacement caused by war. It is a global phenomenon, but nearly three quarters of the world’s internally displaced people live in just ten countries: Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. War and violence displaced 28.3 million internally displaced people worldwide in 2022, three times higher than the annual average for the past decade. In addition to Ukraine, which currently has the largest number of internally displaced people, nine million displaced people live in sub-Saharan Africa, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo leading the way with four million people and Ethiopia with just over two million millions. At the time of the conclusion of the report, the conflict had not yet broken out in Sudan, which has been seeing a surge in people moving within the country in recent days.

The case of Somalia. The conflict and violence have also caused 621,000 displacements in Somalia, the highest figure in the country in over ten years. Some 3.9 million people were displaced at the end of 2022, up from three million at the end of 2021, and overall it is the highest figure since data on Somalia became available in 2009. The increase was also the result of wider coverage and better data collection, particularly in Mogadishu.

Displacement caused by natural disasters. The number of people displaced by extreme weather events has increased by almost 40 per cent since 2021, reaching 32.6 million. The main cause of human displacement has been largely due to La Niña effects, i.e. excessive cooling of surface water temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean which affects, among other things, the climate in Europe. The La Niña phenomenon has now been going on for three consecutive years. In the Horn of Africa, the worst drought in 40 years has caused 2.1 million human movements, including 1.1 million in Somalia alone, while fueling severe food insecurity across the region.

The struggle for resources. In Africa above all, drought fuels competition for water, land and other natural resources, which are starting to run short. Localized conflicts, sometimes directly related to ownership of livestock or agricultural land, have halted seasonal migrations and triggered further displacement. Precisely to block the causes of people’s movements in January 2023, the African Development Bank hosted the “Feed Africa” ​​summit in Dakar, bringing together governments, non-governmental organizations and private sector exponents, to share practices that make it possible to block the food insecurity, which in turn results from conflict and climate change and is itself the cause of further waves of displacement.