Gaza and Sudan raise the number of internally displaced people to 76 million by the end of 2023

The wars in Sudan, the Gaza Strip, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo pushed the number of internally displaced people to a record level of 75.9 million at the end of 2023, up from 71.1 million at the end of 2022, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

The number of internally displaced people has increased by 50% in the last five years, according to what was stated in the annual report of the non-governmental organization, which was issued today, Tuesday, in Geneva.

Unlike refugees who leave outside the country's borders, internally displaced people are forced to move from one place to another within the country in which they reside.

In its global report on internal displacement, the center said that 68.3 million people across the world were displaced due to conflicts and violence, and 7.7 million due to disasters.

In the last five years, the number of internally displaced people as a result of conflicts has increased to 22.6 million, with a significant increase, especially in 2022 and 2023.

With 9.1 million internally displaced people, Sudan has the largest number of displaced people in one country since data began to be recorded in 2008, according to the Monitoring Center.

About half of the internally displaced people reside in sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition to the number of displaced people, the center monitors the number of internal displacement operations, that is, every time an internally displaced person is forced to move to another place within the borders of his country.

The evacuation order issued to some neighborhoods of the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, which was threatened by a large-scale Israeli ground attack, forced people to be displaced for the fifth or sixth time, according to the United Nations last week.

In the Gaza Strip, the number of internally displaced persons by the end of 2023 reached about 1.7 million, with 3.4 million new displacement movements.

The wars in Sudan, the Palestinian Territories, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for about two-thirds of the number of new internally displaced people due to wars in 2023.

Last year, there were 46.9 million forced internal displacements of individuals, 20.5 million of them as a result of conflicts and violence and 26.4 million as a result of disasters.

Throughout the year 2023, six million forced displacements of individuals were recorded as a result of violence in Sudan, that is, more than in the last fourteen years combined.

This is the second largest number of forced internal displacement movements in a year after 16.9 million recorded in Ukraine in 2022.

Since October 7, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza that has left tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, in addition to massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of children and the elderly.