Millions uprooted by war, violence

CONFLICTS and violence in regions like Syria and Ukraine have displaced a record 38 million people inside their own countries, equivalent to the total populations of New York, London and Beijing, a watchdog group said yesterday.

Nearly one third of them – a full 11 million people – were displaced last year alone, with an average of 30 000 people fleeing their homes every day, the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said in a report.

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is behind the IDMC, said: “These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signalling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians.”

Internally displaced people (IDPs) is a label given to people who remain in their homeland, as opposed to refugees, who flee across borders.

According to the latest available UN statistics, there were some 16.7 million refugees in the world at the end of 2013, meaning the total number of displaced people is well above 50 million.

The number of internally displaced people is thus today about twice that of refugees – a dramatic shift from a few decades ago when the two categories stood on equal footing, Egeland said.

“Among the main reasons why the number of IDPs is growing so much are all the closed borders,” he said. The international community was “not willing or able to do as we promise: to protect the vulnerable and the innocent”.

“This report should be a tremendous wake-up call,” Egeland said.

IDMC tracked internal displacement in 60 countries last year, but most of the people fleeing in 2014 were in just five countries: Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. – AFP