About twelve million people have been internally displaced by violence, conflict and disasters in Sub Saharan Africa, with huge numbers found in Sudan and South Sudan.
According to the 2016 Global Report on Internal Displacement released by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, both Sudans feature on the list of 10 countries which host three quarters (30 million) of the world’s IDPs since 2003.
‘Displacement in the Middle East and North Africa has snowballed since the Arab spring uprisings in 2010 and the rise of the Islamic State. Outside the Middle East, the countries with the highest number of people fleeing in 2015 were Ukraine, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Afghanistan, Colombia, Central African Republic and South Sudan,’ the report states in part.
The report, released last week at Chatham House, London, indicates that at the end of 2015, ‘there were 40.8 million IDPs worldwide as a result of conflict and violence – an increase of 2.8 million on 2014, and the highest figure ever recorded. It is also twice the number of refugees in the world’.
Further, the report indicates that in 2015, 27.8 million people in 127 countries were displaced ‘forcibly within their own country’.
‘Of the total, 8.6 million were associated with conflict and violence in 28 countries and 19.2m people displaced due to disasters in 113 countries’, the report states.
