One person was displaced every second in 2016

One person every second was displaced in their home country in 2016 due to conflicts and disasters, according to an aid group yesterday.

More than 31 million people were displaced in 2016 with nearly seven million of those from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, according to data by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, part of the aid agency Norwegian Refugee Council.

A further 24 million people, mainly from Asia, were forced to flee to another area of the country due to natural disasters, such as flooding and wildfires.

Unlike refugees who seek asylum elsewhere, internally displaced persons cannot claim international protection and are often overlooked, according to IDMC.

It can easily fall off the agenda because national governments, in some cases, don’t want to acknowledge it and certainly don’t want anyone externally to start looking into the affairs in their sovereign state.

IDMC Director Alexandra Bilak told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In 2016, conflicts uprooted the majority of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo forcing around 922,000 to flee their homes, followed by 824,000 in Syria and 659,000 in Iraq.

Natural disasters were behind the largest displacements with three times as many people being uprooted than as a result of conflicts. Seven million people in China were forced to leave their homes, followed by the Philippines at nearly six million and India at nearly two and a half million.

Bilak called on policymakers to address the root causes of displacement and focus more attention on IDPs.

People who are displaced over long periods of time and facing huge threats to their daily safety and security will ultimately have to seek protection elsewhere if they’re not getting it in their country.

“Not enough is being spent on prevention and much more is being spent on the symptoms of these crises,” Bilak continued. Millions of Syrians were displaced during the first years of the war but it was not until 2014 and 2015 when they started to flee the country in huge numbers and caused the biggest migration crisis since World World II.

“With the impact of climate change, for example, in the future it is only going to lead to more extreme weather … which will put pressure on resources, which will lead to more conflicts and contribute to that vicious cycle of displacement.”Bilak explained.

SOURCE: Middle East Monitor

 

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