Record 117.3m people forcibly displaced in 2023, UNHCR says

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has declared on Thursday that the number of forcibly displaced people has jumped to a record 117.3 million as of the end of last year.

With no global political changes, the agency warned that the figure could rise further.

According to UNHCR’s study on global trends in forced displacement, the number of individuals forcibly displaced has increased year after year for the past 12 years.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), explained that the figure represents refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, people being forced away by conflict, by persecution, by different and increasingly complex forms of violence.
He added that “conflict remains a very, very deep driver of displacement.”

The war in Sudan, which Grandi called “one of the most catastrophic ones” despite receiving less attention than other crises, is one of the conflicts that have caused displacement.

More than 9 million people have been internally displaced, and another 2 million have fled to neighboring countries such as Chad, Egypt, and South Sudan, Grandi said.

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza was also highlighted as the war caused around 1.7 million people – nearly 80% of the Palestinian enclave’s population – to be repeatedly displaced.

He warned that the refugee crisis outside Gaza would be catastrophic, with the war still raging after several months.