More than 35,000 people were forced to flee their homes every day in 2018 – one every two seconds – taking the world’s displaced population to a record 71 million.
A total of 26 million people have fled across borders, 41 million are displaced within their home countries and 3.5 million have sought asylum – the highest numbers ever, according to UN refugee agency (UNHCR) figures.
Why are so many people being driven away from their families, friends and neighbourhoods?
Devastating wars have contributed to the rise
Conflict and violence, persecution and human rights violations are driving more and more men, women and children from their homes.
In fact, the number of displaced people has doubled in the last 10 years, the UNHCR’s figures show, with the devastating wars in Iraq and Syria causing many families to leave their communities.
Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Yemen and South Sudan, as well as the flow of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh, have also had a significant impact.
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Most do not become refugees
While much of the focus has been on refugees – that’s people forced to flee across borders because of conflict or persecution – the majority of those uprooted across the world actually end up staying in their own countries.
These people, who have left their homes but not their homeland, are referred to as “internally displaced people”, or IDPs, rather than refugees.
IDPs often decide not to travel very far, either because they want to stay close to their homes and family, or because they don’t have the funds to cross borders.
But many internally displaced people end up stuck in areas that are difficult for aid agencies to reach – such as conflict zones – and continue to rely on their own governments to keep them safe. Those governments are sometimes the reason people have fled, or – because of war – have become incapable of providing their own citizens with a safe place to stay.
For this reason, the UN describes IDPs as “among the most vulnerable in the world”.
Colombia, Syria and the DRC have the highest numbers of IDPs.
However, increasing numbers are also leaving home because of natural disasters, mainly “extreme weather events”, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), which monitors the global IDP population only.
The next biggest group of displaced people are refugees. There were 25.9 million by the end of 2018, of whom about half were children.
One in four refugees came from Syria.
The smallest group of displaced people is asylum seekers – those who have applied for sanctuary in another country but whose claim has not been granted. There were 3.5 million in 2018 – fewer than one in 10 of those forced to flee.
Places hit by conflict and violence are most affected
At the end of 2018, Syrians were the largest forcibly displaced population. Adding up IDPs, refugees and asylum seekers, there were 13 million Syrians driven from their homes.
Colombians were the second largest group, with 8m forcibly displaced according to UNHCR figures, while 5.4 million Congolese were also uprooted.
If we just look at figures for last year, a massive 13.6 million people were forced to abandon their homes – again mostly because of conflict. That’s more than the population of Mumbai – the most populous city in India.
Of those on the move in 2018 alone, 10.8 million ended up internally displaced within their home countries – that’s four out of every five people.
A further 2.8 million people sought safety abroad as newly-registered refugees or asylum seekers.
Just 2.9 million people who had previously fled their homes returned to their areas or countries of origin in 2018 – fewer than those who became displaced in the same period.
The world’s largest new population of internally displaced people are Ethiopians. Almost three million abandoned their homes last year – many escaping violence between ethnic groups.
The conflict in the DRC also forced 1.8 million to flee but remain in their home country in 2018.
In war-torn Syria, more than 1.6 million became IDPs.
Venezuelans topped the list of those seeking asylum abroad in 2018, with 341,800 new claims. That’s more than one in five claims submitted last year.
Hyperinflation, food shortages, political turmoil, violence and persecution, have forced hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans to leave their homeland.