UN refugee agency says 117 million people forcibly displaced in 2023

The United Nations refugee agency on Thursday said the number of people forcibly displaced stood at a record 117.3 million as of the end of last year, warning that this figure could rise further without major global political changes. "These are refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, people being forced away by conflict, by persecution, by different and increasingly complex forms of violence," said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In its report on global trends in forced displacement, UNHCR said that there had been a yearly increase in the number of people forcibly displaced over the last 12 years. UNHCR estimates that forced displacement has continued to increase in the first four months of 2024, and that the number of those displaced is likely to have exceeded 120 million by the end of April. The conflicts that have driven displacement include the war in Sudan, which Grandi described as "one of the most catastrophic ones" despite garnering less attention that other crises. More that 9 million people have been internally displaced and another 2 million have fled to neighboring countries including Chad, Egypt and South Sudan. Some 1.7 million people are internally displaced due to the war, many of them multiple times.