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Nearly 120 million people were displaced around the world in 2023, UNHCR report
says The U.N. office on refugees found that by the end of last year, 1 in 69
people had been forced from their homes -- either within their own country or
across an international border.


WORLD


NEARLY 120 MILLION PEOPLE WERE DISPLACED AROUND THE WORLD IN 2023, UNHCR REPORT
SAYS

June 13, 20247:18 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

By 

Willem Marx

NEARLY 120 MILLION PEOPLE WERE DISPLACED AROUND THE WORLD IN 2023, UNHCR REPORT
SAYS

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South Sudanese who fled from Sudan sit outside a nutrition clinic at a transit
center in Renk, South Sudan, May 16, 2023. Fighting in Sudan has displaced 10
million people, according to U.N. figures. Sam Mednick/AP hide caption

toggle caption
Sam Mednick/AP

Almost 120 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced in 2023, the 12th
year in a row that figure has risen, according to a new report by the United
Nations' refugees agency.

That means 1 in 69 people on the planet have been forced from their homes,
either displaced to other parts of their own country, or across an international
border. Just a decade ago, that comparable ratio was just 1 in 125, meaning the
proportion of the global population has almost doubled.

There are multiple factors driving these annual increases, Kelly Clements, the
deputy high commissioner for the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, told NPR. "We've
got wars and conflicts that wage on without a solution in places like
Afghanistan, Syria, now Ukraine, Venezuela, Myanmar — those are the protracted
situations. And then we have new crises and new wars," says Clements.

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The conflict in Gaza, which exploded into the world's consciousness with the
Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack in Israel and the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, has
displaced almost 2 million Palestinians, according to the U.N. agency that aids
Palestinians, UNRWA.

But another vast conflict has roiled the African nation of Sudan for more than a
year now, with more than 10 million people having so far been forced from their
homes, according to the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration.

Children take refuge inside the Shifa Hospital during the war between Israel and
Hamas in Gaza City on Nov. 22, 2023. Victor R. Caivano/AP hide caption

toggle caption
Victor R. Caivano/AP

Several million Sudanese have sought shelter and security in neighboring
countries, where they are officially recognized as refugees and — according to
the new UNHCR report — join a global refugee population that is now larger than
that of California at 43 million in total.

Many millions of others though have been forced to abandon their homes and seek
shelter elsewhere inside Sudan, labeled as internally displaced people, or IDPs.

The UNHCR report shows there were more IDPs worldwide at the end of 2023 — 68.3
million — than there were citizens of the United Kingdom.

Refugees and displaced people often rely on some form of international support
for their food or shelter — whether that comes directly from the UNHCR, from
other U.N. agencies, from nonprofit groups or directly from foreign governments.
But Clements says only very few of them try to travel far from their homes.

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"People tend to stay very close to their communities, close to their countries,
the majority are in neighboring countries," says Clements, a U.S. citizen who
has worked for the United Nations and U.S. State Department for more than 30
years. "The majority of forcibly displaced are in low- and middle-income
countries, so these are communities and countries — governments — that don't
have enormous capacity to be able to receive tens of thousands, hundreds of
thousands, and in some cases, millions of people in addition to meeting their
own citizen’s needs."

UNHCR was established following World War II to help with the rehousing of the
many millions of people who had been made homeless during that years-long
conflict, and it now operates across dozens of countries worldwide.

Over the course of 2023, the total number of people who found themselves
forcibly displaced from their home for any one of several reasons — persecution,
conflict, violence, human rights violations or public disturbances — increased
by 8.8 million.

And Clements says data shows that over that same period of time, 7.7 million
people were forced to flee their homes due to climate disasters that are
increasingly linked to conflict.

People arrive at a displacement camp amid a drought on the outskirts of Dollow,
Somalia. Jerome Delay/AP hide caption

toggle caption
Jerome Delay/AP

"There are rarely occasions now where you don't have an intersection between
conflict and climate," Clements says, pointing to a region of Ethiopia that
borders Somalia — long the site of armed conflict — where more than 200,000
people have been forced to abandon their land and livelihoods amid a multiyear
drought. "In those circumstances where you find people displaced because of
conflict and war," Clements says, "there are also those exacerbating
circumstances."

The agency drew on its own operational data, as well as numbers provided by
governments and nonprofit organizations, to inform the annual report that is
designed to examine global trends in forced displacement.

"Forced displacement is one of the global challenges of our time," Clement says,
adding that it requires the international community to work together to address
it and support efforts to alleviate the suffering of those displaced. "If we
have that kind of international cooperation, we have a chance of being able to
address this," she says.

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But in the first four months of this year, UNHCR estimates that the number of
people forcibly displaced increased worldwide at a rate of almost a million a
month.

 * refugees
 * internally displaced people
 * forcibly displaced
 * Sudan
 * Palestinians
 * Gaza Strip
 * Israel-Hamas war

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