News Center- Number of internally displaced people (IDPs) has kept growing around the world. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has published its annual Global Report on Internal Displacement on Tuesday.

Conflict and violence in Sudan, Palestine and elsewhere drove the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) around the world to 75.9 million at the end of 2023, according to the report.

“Of the total, 68.3 million were displaced by conflict and violence and 7.7 million by disasters. Almost half, 46 per cent, of all IDPs live in sub-Saharan Africa,” the report said.

In Sudan, the 9.1m people displaced at the end of the year was the most ever recorded in a single country since records began in 2008. Sudan’s 6 million internal displacements, or forced movements, by conflict during 2023 were more than its previous 14 years combined and the second most ever recorded in one country after Ukraine’s 16.9 million in 2022. In the Gaza Strip, IDMC calculated 3.4 million displacements in the last three months of 2023, which was 17 per cent of total conflict displacements worldwide during the year.

“Number of internally displaced people (IDPs) has grown 50% in the last five years,” the report said.

The millions of people forced to flee in 2023 were just the “tip of the iceberg”, said IDMC director Alexandra Bilak, adding to the tens of millions of IDPs already displaced from previous and ongoing conflicts, violence and disasters. 

“Over the past two years, we’ve seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving,” said Alexandra Bilak. “Conflict, and the devastation it leaves behind, is keeping millions from rebuilding their lives, often for years on end.” 

In the past five years, the number of people living in internal displacement as a result of conflict and violence has increased by 22.6 million, or 49 per cent, with the two biggest increases in 2022 and 2023, according to the report.

Floods, storms, earthquakes, wildfires and other disasters triggered 26.4 million displacements in 2023, the third highest annual total in the past ten years. The 7.7 million IDPs at the end of 2023 displaced by disasters is the second most since IDMC began recording this metric in 2019.