People displaced from Sudan's Jazira state arrive in packed vehicles to the entrance of the city of Gedaref on June 10, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).-/Getty Images
The world’s refugee crisis, accelerated by wars in Gaza and Sudan, has surged to another record level this year, with an estimated 120 million people around the world now forced from their homes, the United Nations says.
The relentless rise of forcible displacement has continued this year for the 12th consecutive year, creating a displaced population as large as the entire population of Japan, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said in its latest annual report on global trends.
Compared to a decade ago, the report says, the proportion of the world’s population that is displaced has nearly doubled, to 1.5 per cent.
Forcibly displaced worldwide
2023, in millions of people
People in need of
international protection
Palestine refugees
under UNRWA mandate
Asylum
seekers
Refugees under
UNHCR mandate
Internally displaced people
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
the globe and mail, Source: unhcr
Forcibly displaced worldwide
2023, in millions of people
People in need of
international protection
Palestine refugees
under UNRWA mandate
Asylum
seekers
Refugees under
UNHCR mandate
Internally displaced people
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
the globe and mail, Source: unhcr
Forcibly displaced worldwide
2023, in millions of people
People in need
of international
protection
Palestine refugees
under UNRWA
mandate
Asylum
seekers
Refugees under
UNHCR mandate
Internally
displaced
people
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
the globe and mail, Source: unhcr
The report, published on Thursday, blames the expanding crisis on a wave of new wars and a morass of unresolved conflicts, not only in Gaza and Sudan, but also in countries such as Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UN refugee agency responded to 43 separate emergencies in 29 countries last year, including crises involving both internally displaced people and cross-border flows.
“Behind these stark and rising numbers lie countless human tragedies,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement.
“It is high time for warring parties to respect the basic laws of war and international law. The fact is that without better cooperation and concerted efforts to address conflict, human rights violations and the climate crisis, displacement figures will keep rising, bringing fresh misery and costly humanitarian responses.”
At a background briefing, Mr. Grandi said it was a “difficult moment” for the refugee crisis, since the “very fragmented” international political situation is making it more difficult to find solutions to conflicts. The number of refugee emergencies has increased fourfold in recent years, he said.
The surge in displacement is being fuelled by the growing intensity of wars, which are producing a rising number of conflict-related fatalities, according to the UNHCR report. Since 2021, an annual average of 27.8 million people have fled from their homes worldwide – nearly twice the average number over the past quarter-century.
In total numbers, Sudan is the worst of the recent crises, with 9.1 million people displaced inside the country by the end of last year. This is the largest number of people ever recorded to have remained displaced within their own country at year-end, according to the UNHCR data.
Another UN agency, the International Organization for Migration, reported this week that more than 12 million people in Sudan are now internally displaced or refugees abroad, including those who had been displaced even before the latest war erupted between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in April, 2023.
This means that fully one-quarter of Sudan’s entire population has now become internally displaced or refugees abroad. Sudan is also on the verge of becoming the site of the world’s biggest hunger crisis, with more than two million people at high risk of famine if they don’t urgently receive aid, according to the UN’s food agency, the World Food Program.
Gaza is another highly visible crisis, with more than three-quarters of its 2.2 million people forced from their homes by the end of last year, many of them having suffered multiple displacements, the UNHCR report says.
Efforts to help refugees are “severely underfunded,” Mr. Grandi told the briefing, and the backlog of unprocessed asylum claims is continuing to grow, with the United States having the largest backlog.
Only a small fraction of the global displaced population – about six million people – have managed to return to their homes in the past year. “Solutions are very rare,” Mr. Grandi said.
The UNHCR report shows that Canada is among the five countries receiving the largest number of new refugee applications, with nearly 147,000 new claims received last year. The top recipient of new applications was the United States, with about 1.2 million claims.
Canada also resettled more than 51,000 refugees last year – the second-highest number of resettlements, behind only the United States. While the worldwide number of global resettlements was higher than the previous year, it represented only 8 per cent of those who have been identified by UNHCR as needing resettlement.