A report by the Norwegian Refugee Council says nine out of the 10 countries on the list are African.
Every year, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) publishes its report on the world’s most neglected displacement crises. These are the countries where millions are displaced, exposed to violence, famine, disease, and dispossession.
Burkina Faso has topped the list for the second year in a row, followed by Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali, Niger, Honduras, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan.
“The utter neglect of displaced people has become the new normal,” said Jan Egeland, secretary-general of NRC, in a statement on the report.
“The local political and military elites disregard the suffering they cause, and the world is neither shocked nor compelled to act by stories of desperation and record-breaking statistics.”
Here’s everything you need to know about the displacement crises in these countries, ranked from most neglected.
An internally displaced person has been forced to run from their home with little to no belongings to seek shelter elsewhere in the same country.
Displaced people flee because they are scared for their lives, but there are usually practically no resources available to help them when they stop running.
This means inadequate shelters, tents, food, water, medicine, hygiene facilities for women and girls, toilets, showers, clothing, safety measures, comfort items, or means of communication with the outside world.
The violence killed more than 8,400 people last year, double the deaths the previous year, according to the NRC.
About two million civilians were trapped in 36 blockaded towns across the country by the end of 2023.
Cameroon’s violence is centred around the Francophone government’s suppression of Anglophone protests against marginalisation.
What does being internally displaced mean?
A separatist conflict erupted in 2016 when the government suppressed protests in the English-speaking northwest and southwest.
More than 6,000 people have been killed in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions since.
The DRC has suffered armed violence for many years, with both the government and foreign actors providing the belligerents with weapons.
About 6.9 million people across the DRC were displaced by the end of last year, mostly in the eastern provinces.
Since an escalation of hostilities in March 2022, more than 1.6 million people have been driven from their homes in North Kivu in the east of the country.
The 2023 withdrawal of a 13,000-strong peacekeeping force led to increased clashes between the state’s military and non-state armed groups in northern Mali.
Mali faced the fight against armed groups on its own but it struggled, and people fled their homes in the thousands, seeking safety elsewhere.
More than 340,000 people were internally displaced as of December 2023, according to the NRC report.
As a result of a coup in July 2023, Niger lost Western political and financial support and broke ties with regional partners.
Increasing insecurity and non-state armed groups in the Diffa, Maradi, Tahoua and Tillabery regions pushed more than 335,000 people out of their homes.
The country also hosted 290,000 refugees and more than 35,000 asylum seekers who escaped conflict in neighbouring countries, the NRC says.
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