Report: 35 million internally displaced people live in Africa

Wars and extreme weather conditions have driven up the number of people fleeing their own countries in Africa. According to a report by the Internally Displaced Persons Monitoring Center (IDMC), around 35 million Africans were living as refugees and displaced persons within their home countries at the end of last year. This means that the number of internally displaced persons has tripled within 15 years, according to the report published in Geneva. This means that almost half of all internally displaced persons worldwide live on the African continent.

Most of them, namely 32.5 million people, fled from violence and armed conflicts. Five countries account for 80 percent of the people who have fled and been displaced: Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Somalia. Many people are forced to flee over a longer period of time or repeatedly.

However, extreme weather conditions such as drought and floods are also increasingly becoming causes of flight. According to the report, the number of internally displaced persons rose from 1.1 million in 2009 to 6.3 million at the end of last year. As more extreme weather events are expected as a result of climate change, the number of people fleeing natural disasters is likely to increase further. In some countries, such as Somalia or Sudan, the causes of flight also overlap, for example when people first flee from war and later because of a flood.

SDA