Ukrainian families on an evacuation train to Dnipro and Lviv on Feb. 10, 2023. (Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post)
The war in Ukraine and the flooding in Pakistan helped push the number of people internally displaced worldwide to an all-time high of 71.1 million in 2022, according to a report published Thursday by the Norwegian Refugee Council.
A "perfect storm" of conflict, natural disasters and the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic combined to trigger "displacement on a scale never seen before" in 2022, the nonprofit's secretary general, Jan Egeland, said.
A global food security crisis, fueled by the war in Ukraine, which is a major grain exporter, has only added to the plight of those uprooted from their homes in search of safety and shelter. And the overlap of crises meant repeated and protracted displacement for many, he said.
Nearly three-quarters of the world's internationally displaced people live in just 10 countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the data showed.
IDPs are people forced to move within the borders of their own countries, and the report by the NRC's Internal Displacement Monitoring Center does not take into account refugees — those fleeing to other countries.
The Geneva-based center listed the global climate pattern known as La Niña, which continued for a third year in 2022, as a major driver of displacement as well.
The weather phenomenon contributed to record levels of flood displacement in Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil, and the worst drought on record in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the NRC report said.
In Ukraine, 5.9 million people were uprooted by Russia's war, pushing the world total of people internally displaced by conflict and violence to more than 62 million. Syria had 6.8 million IDPs after more than a decade of war.
Floods, drought and landslides pushed the number of people displaced in their country by disasters to 8.7 million.
By the end of 2022, these factors brought the total number of IDPs worldwide to 71.1 million, up 20 percent from the year before.
While the annual report does not include 2023, the data does not suggest a decline in displacement. At least 700,000 people have been internally displaced in Sudan by a power struggle between rival military forces in the country, the United Nations migration agency said this week.
"Today's displacement crises are growing in scale, complexity and scope," said the displacement monitoring center's director, Alexandra Bilak. "Greater resources and further research are essential to help understand and better respond to IDPs' needs," she said.
