Conflict, violence displaced 33 million in 2013

Last year marked the 15th year that the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center started keeping track of internally displaced people around the world. Created at the request of the United Nations, the IDP database has been monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement in more than 50 countries. In 1998, it recorded 19.3 million IDPs. The number of IDPs around the world had increased significantly just five years after the database was established. Nearly 25 million people were forced to relocate that year due to armed conflict and human rights violations. But, unlike refugees who left their home countries, these IDPs “received much less attention, although their number is nearly twice as high, and their plight is often even worse than that of refugees.” IDMC’s 2013 report, which was released this month, notes even larger numbers and further underscores the urgent need to address worldwide internal displacement. At the end of 2013, IDPs driven away by armed conflict, “generalized violence” and human rights violations numbered 33.3 million — up 16 percent from the 28.8 million reported IDPs in 2012. This year’s higher figure was largely due to three factors: new large-scale movements; challenges in working toward what the IDMC calls “durable solutions,” or when IDPs have achieved sustainable integration into either their places of origin or new settlements; and better data collection. While several hurdles continue to hamper the quality of information about IDPs — problems that IDMC itself acknowledges — there has been improvement in the availability of data about internal displacement. Nigeria’s National Commission for Refugees, for example, produced figures on its IDPs for the first time in 2013. Nearly 8.2 million people were newly displaced in 2013 — an increase of 1.6 million, or 24 percent, from 2012. Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and Sudan comprised 78 percent of new IDPs in 2013. South Sudan, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Colombia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mali were sources of newly displaced people as well. South Sudan alone, for instance, recorded 383,000 new IDPs that year. Among these 12 countries, Syria, CAR, South Sudan and Mali recorded their highest IDP numbers in 2013. In Syria, where IDPs now comprise at least 32 percent of its population, the government’s refusal to recognize those forced to leave because of conflict as official IDPs has limited the capacity of humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, to protect civilians. It also led more than 30 legal experts to urge aid groups to defy Syria President Bashar Assad’s ban to deliver humanitarian aid to conflict-affected areas in the country. Meanwhile, the conflict in CAR — driven by three armed groups: the mostly Muslim Séléka, the predominantly Christian anti-Balaka militias, and in southeastern and eastern CAR, Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army — displaced 935,000 people in 2013, or 20.3 percent of the CAR population. In South Sudan, more than half of its new IDPs, or 194,000, only fled their homes last December, when South Sudan President Salva Kiir accused rebel leader and former vice president Riek Machar of a coup plot — a charge that Machar has since denied. The tension, nevertheless, soon escalated into violence in at least seven of South Sudan’s 10 states. France’s five-month military offensive in Mali led to a temporary reprieve from the conflict driven by Islamist armed groups. But the return of IDPs to their homes remains a challenge, as guerilla-style attacks have made movements and the delivery of aid difficult, forcing some into secondary displacement. Complicating the situation in Mali is the abuse of urban IDPs, particularly women, who have reported being sexually abused by their landlords, or being forced into prostitution in exchange for a place to stay. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most affected by conflict-driven internal displacement. Several of the countries that have recorded the highest number of newly displaced people last year are based in the region. In South and Southeast Asia, internal displacement fell from 1.4 million in 2012 to 714,000 in 2013, marking an almost 50 percent decrease in IDPs. But armed conflict and generalized violence in the Philippines, Pakistan and Afghanistan accounted for more than 80 percent of the region’s new displacement. Natural hazards — floods, in particular — also exacerbated IDPs’ already vulnerable situation in central Mindanao in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the number of IDPs in the Americas dropped from 230,000 in 2012 to 176,900 in 2013. Colombia, however, accounted for most of the new displacement in the region. The absence of a bilateral ceasefire between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has led to a continued crisis that IDMC deems “one of the world’s most dramatic humanitarian emergencies.” Join the Devex community and gain access to more in-depth analysis, breaking news and business advice — and a host of other services — on international development, humanitarian aid and global health.