WUNRN
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre – Norwegian Refugee Council
http://www.nrc.no/?did=9196697
Direct Link to Full 99-Page 2015 Report:
Displaced people from minority Yazidi sect, fleeing
violence from forces loyal to Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards Syrian
border, on outskirts of Sinjar mountain (Photo: Stringer Iraq / Reuters, August
2014).
(06.05.2015)
A record-breaking 38 million people have been displaced
within their own country by conflict or violence. This is the equivalent of the
total populations of London, New York and Beijing combined.
“These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation,
signalling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians” said Secretary
General Jan Egeland.
Today, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC),
part of NRC, launched its Global Overview 2015: People internally displaced by
conflict and violence at the United Nations in Geneva. With internal
displacement figures reaching a record high for the third year in a row, the
report also documents that 11 million people were newly displaced by violent
events throughout 2014.
“Global diplomats, UN resolutions, peace talks and ceasefire agreements have
lost the battle against ruthless armed men who are driven by political or
religious interests rather than human imperatives,” said Egeland. “This report
should be a tremendous wake-up call. We must break this trend where millions of
men, women and children are becoming trapped in conflict zones around the
world.”
Volker Türk, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, said that the
staggering number of internally displaced people because of conflict and violence
is a harbinger of movements to come. “We know that more and more internally
displaced have been forced to move within their country multiple times. The
longer a conflict lasts, the more insecure they feel and when hopelessness sets
in, many will cross borders and become refugees,” he said.
“And as we have seen in the recent past, for example in the Mediterranean,
despair drives people to take their chances and even risk dangerous boat
journeys. The obvious solution lies in an all-out effort to bring about peace
in war-ravaged countries,” Mr Türk added.
The report also highlights how long-lasting, or protracted displacement,
contributes to this alarmingly high global total. In 2014, there were people
living in displacement for ten years or more in nearly 90% of the 60 countries
and territories IDMC monitored.
“As new or renewed crises emerge in countries such as Ukraine or Iraq, new
caseloads of internally displaced people join an already massive global
displaced population who seem blocked from finding ways of ending their
displacement” said Alfredo Zamudio, director of IDMC.
“Much of this vast population includes those who were displaced many years ago,
like in Azerbaijan or Cyprus, so what we commonly see is that the very act of
displacement forces an individual into a vicious cycle that becomes harder to
escape from the longer they are in it” said Zamudio.
The IDMC report also describes how displacement often reveals underlying
structural challenges within a country, and how it can be prolonged by a
government’s deliberate politicisation of the issue or its refusal to enter
into a formal resolution of a crisis.
“38 million human beings are suffering - often in horrendous conditions where
they have no hope and no future—and unless we challenge ourselves to change our
approach, the shockwaves of these conflicts will continue to haunt us for
decades to come,” said Egeland.
For more information visit internal-displacement.org