Ukraine war pushes world’s displaced past 100 million

Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed the world’s number of forcibly displaced people to more than 100 million for the first time.

The UN said the figure was alarming and should serve as a wake-up call to address the reasons behind record numbers of people fleeing their homes.

Ninety-million people worldwide had been forcibly displaced by the end of last year, the UN refugee agency said yesterday. This was spurred by violence in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, more than eight million people have been displaced within the country, while more than six million fled overseas as refugees.

“One hundred million is a stark figure – sobering and alarming in equal measure. It’s a record that should never have been set,” said UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi.

“This must serve as a wakeup call to resolve and prevent destructive conflicts, end persecution and address the underlying causes that force innocent people to flee their homes.”

The 100-million figure amounts to more than 1 per cent of the global population. Only 13 countries have a bigger population than this number of forcibly displaced people.

The figures combine refugees, asylum seekers, as well as more than 50 million people who are displaced inside their own countries.

Mr Grandi said the international response to people fleeing war in Ukraine had been “overwhelmingly positive”.

“Compassion is alive and we need a similar mobilisation for all crises around the world. But ultimately, humanitarian aid is a palliative, not a cure,” he said.

“To reverse this trend, the only answer is peace and stability so that innocent people are not forced to gamble between acute danger at home or precarious flight and exile.” The

UNHCR will outline the full data on last year’s forced displacements in its annual Global Trends Report, scheduled for release on June 16.

Mr Grandi also called for countries to lift any remaining pandemic-related asylum restrictions they may have, saying they contravene a fundamental human right.

“I am worried that measures enacted on the pretext of responding to Covid-19 are being used as cover to exclude and deny asylum to people fleeing violence and persecution,” he said on Friday.

A joint report released last week by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council

said that about 38 million new internal displacements were reported last year.

Some of those were by people forced to flee several times during 2021.

The figure marks the second-highest annual number of new internal displacements in a decade after 2020.

Last year, new internal displacements caused by conflict surged to 14.4 million – a 50 per cent increase from 2020, the report showed.

“It has never been as bad as this,” said NRC secretary general Jan Egeland. “The world is falling apart.”

Natural disasters continued to account for most new internal displacement last year.