Wars, climate disasters lead to record-high number of internally displaced people

Charitable organizations distribute food to displaced people in shelter tents in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on June 9, 2024. / Credit: Anas-Mohammed/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 15, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

The global number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the world skyrocketed to a record high of 83.4 million in 2024, according to a report released Tuesday, marking a more than 100% increase in six years. 

“Conflicts and violence have left 73.5 million people displaced and [natural] disasters 9.8 million, in both cases the highest figures on record,” the latest edition of the Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) finds.

According to the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agency, internally displaced persons are those who have been forced to flee their homes by conflict, violence, persecution, or disasters; however, unlike refugees, they remain within their own country. 

The total number of globally displaced people in 2023 was 75.9 million, while the first GRID in 2015 recorded 40.5 million.

Conducted by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council, this year’s report listed ongoing wars such as those in Sudan, Gaza, and Ukraine as well as natural disasters like hurricanes Helene and Milton as driving factors behind the record-breaking numbers of people forced to leave their homes.

Sudan recorded the highest number of displaced people in the world, at 11.6 million, followed by Syria at 7.4 million. In Gaza, the report estimates that more than 3.2 million displacements occurred in 2024 while in Ukraine it recorded about 3.7 million. For its part, the U.S. had more than 11 million displacements due to mass evacuations following hurricanes. 

“The ever-increasing number of IDPs results in part from the insufficient support [internally displaced people] receive to put an end to their displacement by returning home or making a new home elsewhere and addressing their related needs,” the report states, noting that the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen, where conflicts have been ongoing for years or even decades, recorded their highest-ever numbers of displacements. 

During a jubilee year audience on Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV urged thousands of Eastern-rite Catholics present from around the world, many of whom come from places experiencing violence, not to abandon their ancestral lands and assured them that he will do everything he can to bring peace there.

“I thank God for those Christians — Eastern and Latin alike — who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them,” he said. “Christians must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence. Please, let us strive for this!” 

In 2020, the Vatican’s migrant and refugee office released guidelines on how the Church ought to respond to the problem of people who have been internally displaced within their own countries due to conflict or disaster.

The document, the “Pastoral Orientation on Internally Displaced People,” calls on Catholic dioceses and organizations to “welcome, protect, promote, and integrate” people who have been internally displaced.

The 47-page document quotes the late Pope Francis, who noted in his New Year address to the Holy See Diplomatic Corps in 2020 that because consistent protections for internally displaced people do not exist in the same way as they do for refugees, “the result is that internally displaced persons do not always receive the protection they deserve.”