Number Of Internally Displaced People Worldwide Reaches Record High Of 50.8Mln - Report

A record 50.8 million people were classified as internally displaced due to conflicts and climate-related disasters at the end of 2019, a report from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 28th April, 2020) A record 50.8 million people were classified as internally displaced due to conflicts and climate-related disasters at the end of 2019, a report from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said on Tuesday.

"Conflict, violence and disasters continue to uproot millions of people from their homes every year. Never in IDMC's history have we recorded more people internally displaced than we do today," Alexandra Bilak, IDMC's director, said in the organization's annual report.

According to the IDMC, 45.7 million people were internally displaced due to conflict and violence at the end of 2019. A further 5.1 million individuals were internally displaced as a result of climate-related disasters.

At the end of 2018, IDMC reported that 41.3 million people across the world were internally displaced due to conflict and violence.

A record number of new internal displacements were also recorded in 2019, IDMC stated. In total, 33.4 million new internal displacements were reported in 145 countries this past year, up from 28 million in 2018.

The IDMC defines new displacements as new movements.

In an accompanying interview with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Bilak indicated that several countries were driving the growth of global internal displacement levels.

"The majority are in a handful of countries: Syria, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen and Afghanistan. With the exception of Colombia, those countries all had the largest numbers of new conflict-related displacements in 2019. There is a huge burden being shouldered by these countries that already had large and protracted caseloads of internally displaced people," she said.

Bilak also expressed her concern that the COVID-19 pandemic could have a disproportionate impact on internally displaced populations across the world.

In UNHCR's annual report, most recently published this past June, the agency estimated that almost 70.8 million people were displaced worldwide.