By the end of 2014, nearly 60 million people worldwide were displaced either within or beyond their country’s borders, according to the most recent publicly available United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates. Of these, nearly 13.9 million were newly displaced, a number roughly equivalent to the current population of the Netherlands. Syrians have quickly become the world’s largest displaced population; as of July 2015, at least 7.6 million were internally displaced, and by December nearly 4.4 million had been registered as refugees outside Syria.
Other crises less frequently in the headlines have also generated substantial suffering and displacement, and in some places, internally displaced persons (IDPs) share space and resources with refugees from neighboring countries as conflicts and war erode national borders. As South Sudan marked its fourth independence anniversary in 2015, more than 770,000 people had fled to neighboring countries and at least 1.6 million were internally displaced—in addition to the continuing inflow of Sudanese refugees, which totaled more than 265,000 as of August. The number of refugees fleeing the Central African Republic has nearly doubled since December 2013, reaching more than 450,000 as of mid-November 2015. In addition, nearly 38,000 people were newly displaced in the capital Bangui as religious and communal violence intensified in September. And in Yemen, more than 5,600 people have been killed and 2.3 million displaced (up from 545,700 in May), with another 170,000 fleeing the country since sectarian conflict broke out in March. At the same time, the country is host to 264,600 refugees, the vast majority Somali, and in the first ten months of 2015, 70,000 refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants had crossed the Red Sea to Yemen.
While few places in the world remain untouched by growing displacement (four of UNHCR’s five regional offices reported a substantial growth in refugee populations in 2014, and the conflicts driving displacement have continued into 2015), the effects have clearly been felt more heavily in certain places. Most individuals who are eventually forced to seek refuge across borders—approximately 14.4 million people in 2014—did so in a neighboring country. Ten countries, none in Europe and nearly all in the developing world, host close to 60 percent of the world’s refugees. Ninety percent of Syrian refugees are hosted in neighboring countries, and in Lebanon, Syrians now comprise almost one-quarter of the total population. The consequences of mass displacement have been most profound for the countries and regions that are, in many ways, least equipped to take on the responsibility of providing protection.
Even more of those forced from their communities and homes choose, at least initially, to remain within the boundaries of their countries. Ongoing fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2015, for example, forced more than 2 million people to flee, with more than 1.5 million internally displaced as of October. And Iraq hosts more than 270,000 refugees, most in the Kurdish regional governorate, who live alongside at least 3.2 million Iraqis displaced as of mid-November, driven from their homes largely by ISIS violence. As strain on these communities grows or violence proliferates, internal displacement can become a precursor to refugee flows.
