Record of internal displaced people worldwide – USA at the top

In 2024, new armed conflicts and natural disasters led to a record for the internal displaced people – that is, people who had to look for refuge elsewhere in their own country. The number of dismissal from natural disasters was nowhere as high as in the United States, reports the observation center for internal displaced persons (IDMC) in Geneva. The triggers included the hurricanes « Helene » and « Milton ».

There were eleven million displacements in the United States in 2024. These have been as many as in no country since the beginning of the 2008 records. Background: « Explanations » also count evacuations from storms. The number of internal displaced people worldwide was 83.4 million at the end of the year, as the observation center reported. This is more than twice as much as six years earlier and almost ten percent more than 2023. Almost 90 percent of people fled and fight against violence. The observation center mentions the Democratic Republic of Congo, the occupied Palestinian areas and the Sudan.

Almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip on the run

The number of displacements also includes people who had to leave their place of residence several times and is therefore higher than the number of displaced persons. Many people have to flee several times because they are not safe at their first refuge or because they are driven out again by another disaster. Therefore, both displacement within a year and the number of displaced persons are counted at the end of the year. Some displaced persons have not been able to get back home for years.

In 2024, the observation center counted 3.2 million displacements in the Palestinian areas occupied by Israel. On the deadline at the end of 2024, however, there were 2.03 million displaced persons, including practically the entire population of the Gaza Strip. It was eleven million displacements for the United States, but at the end of the year there were only 22,000 displaced people.

In total, the observation center for the past year counted 65.8 million new displacements. A good two thirds of them were due to natural disasters – also a record number.

The observation site focuses on people who have stayed in their own country, i.e. domestic people. Overall, wars, conflicts or disasters have to leave their homes. Many flee the borders to other countries and are not counted for these statistics. In mid-2024, the UN Refugee Aid Work (UNHCR) already spoke of 122.6 million displaced people worldwide- in their home and other countries.