GENEVA - Sub-Saharan Africa had nearly half of all internally displaced people (IDP) in the world last year — 34.8 million people in 2023, from 31.7 million in 2022, according to the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, a Swiss non-profit.
The outbreak of the war in Sudan in April 2023 drove those numbers up: The country now has 9.1 million displaced people, the highest number of internally displaced people in the world.
That’s up from 3.6 million at the end of 2022. DR Congo, where there is an ongoing armed conflict predominantly in the eastern region, has the third highest number of IDPs in the world, with 6.7 million people.
Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria round up the top five, with at least 3 million IDPs each.
The number of displaced people “will likely continue to rise” without durable solutions that ensure peace, poverty reduction and climate change mitigation, the Centre said.
Internally displaced people are those who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict, violence, or disasters and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border. This figure continues to rise as more people flee each year, adding to the numbers of those who have been living in displacement for years or even decades and have not yet achieved a durable solution.
