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GENEVA – A new report finds that a record 50.8 million people worldwide are displaced within their own countries due to conflict, violence and natural disasters. The report, released by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, says an estimated 33.4 million people were recently displaced in 2019, the highest annual number since 2012.
The report says that five countries, Syria, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen and Afghanistan, account for the majority of the 45.7 million people internally displaced by conflict and violence.
Director of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center Alexandra Bilek tells VOA that much of the displacement last year was fueled by new and ongoing conflicts and violence in West Africa and the Sahel, as well as ongoing local conflicts in Africa Central and the Horn of Africa.
“So, countries that have been heavily affected by internal displacement in recent years that still experience new waves of violence and displacement every year, including in 2019,” says Bilek.
One of the most dramatic examples of this is Burkina Faso. The report says conflicts and violence largely linked to an increase in terrorist activities have caused a huge increase in internal displacement from 42,000 people in 2018 to more than half a million last year.
Finding durable solutions for IDPs is difficult, says Bilek because they are citizens of their countries. She points out that it is the responsibility of governments to protect and help their nationals.
“That is why the international response in those contexts is slower and the international community is perhaps more sensitive to the sovereignty of the state in a context of internally displaced persons and internally displaced persons than in a context of refugees. I would say that it is much more complicated from a political point of view to respond ”.
Although there are more than twice as many internally displaced persons as refugees, the problems of internally displaced persons receive much less attention from the international media.
The Senior Advisor on Internal Displacement of the UN refugee agency, Sumbul Rizvi. He explains that this is because the plight of refugees fleeing borders seeking protection is more visible than that of internally displaced persons.
She tells VOA that media attention is absolutely essential to illuminate the needs of uprooted people within their own countries.
“But also, the root causes of why these situations may have occurred and what can be done to address them, thus paving the way for solutions. And solutions cannot be just humanitarian solutions. They must be related to political development and some of the main causes of internal displacement, “he said.
The authors of the report fear that the global coronavirus pandemic has a particularly high cost on the lives and livelihoods of internally displaced persons. They point out that the crowded and miserable conditions of the settlements in which the internally displaced live are perfect breeding grounds for this deadly disease.
