70.8 million displaced people

Inequality and marginalisation are two important factors that trigger conflicts. This is a global phenomenon occurring in such diverse geographical areas as Myanmar, Afghanistan, much of the Middle East, the Sahel belt in Africa, and Colombia. It is particularly threatening when inequality runs along ethnic and religious divides and the authorities do not have the political will or ability to address the situation before it becomes violent. This type of conflict, where an entire group is defined as “the enemy”, hits the civilian population particularly hard. The driving forces behind organised violence can include armed groups, criminal gangs or elites who resort to violence to promote their own interests. 

More than half of the world’s refugees and displaced people are children. Today’s armed conflicts are increasingly affecting cities and densely populated areas, which puts children at particular risk. In many places, such as Syria and Yemen, we are seeing that schools and hospitals have become targets for attacks. The children receive no education or healthcare, and don’t have enough to eat. 

Many conflicts last not just years, but decades. Palestinians who were children in the 1960s have now become grandparents and their families are still displaced from their homeland. The danger of long-standing conflicts is that they come to be considered the “normal state” of a country, which in turn leads to donor apathy and thus to less money for humanitarian aid work.

Seen from a global perspective, it is the developments in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East that have given the greatest cause for concern in recent years. In sub-Saharan Africa, 7.4 million people were displaced within their own country due to conflict and violence in 2018. In 2017, the corresponding figure was 5.5 million. In 2018, 670,000 Africans fled to other countries.

The clear pattern in recent years has seen African refugee crises dominate NRC’s annual list of neglected crises. Seven out of ten countries and the first four on this year’s list are African nations. 

One reason is the continuation of prolonged conflicts such as those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Mali. But at the same time, several new local conflicts have emerged in countries such as Cameroon and Ethiopia. The Democratic Republic of the Congo topped the NRC’s list of the world’s ten most neglected crises in 2018 and is number two on this year’s list. 

When Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace agreement in July 2018, it sparked hope of positive progress throughout the Horn of Africa, one of the continent’s most conflict-filled regions. The border war between the two countries started in 1998 and cost at least 80,000 people their lives. It may seem like a paradox that, despite many positive political changes in Ethiopia and the conclusion of a peace agreement with Eritrea, the country had the world’s highest number of new internally displaced people last year. A shocking 2.9 million were displaced from their homes in 2018 alone. Local and ethnic conflicts have spread to new areas. Drought has also been an important factor, increasing the competition for soil and scarce resources. Ethiopia also hosts nearly 1 million refugees from elsewhere, mainly the neighbouring countries of Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan. 

In the Sahel belt, an area that stretches across the African continent south of the Sahara, millions of people have been displaced in some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable states. This not only creates massive humanitarian crises, but also hinders development in much of the region. The EU and the international community have largely focused on security measures to stop the flow of migrants to Europe without contributing enough funding to meet the enormous humanitarian needs underlying it. In 2018, only 58 per cent of the UN’s emergency aid appeal for the region was raised. This means that many people in great need did not receive adequate help, while others received no help at all. 

The conflict in Mali, which broke out in 2012, is causing major repercussions for several countries in the Sahel region. The security situation in the country deteriorated further in 2018, and violence has spread from the north to more central parts of the country. In the five short months from January to May 2019, 133,000 people were displaced from their homes as a result of violence and military operations. There is a great risk that the conflict will intensify in 2019. The situation also has major negative humanitarian and security implications for neighbouring Burkina Faso. 

The armed conflict in north-east Nigeria continues to affect all the countries around Lake Chad. Attacks by the Nigerian armed group Boko Haram have hit Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and there is a fear that the violence in the region will spread to new areas. 

In 2018, violence and political unrest increased dramatically in the English-speaking provinces of Cameroon. Demonstrations and protests against the authorities in 2016 led to clashes and later to armed conflict. There are currently half a million people displaced in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon and an estimated additional 250,000 people internally displaced in the Far North region of the country, along with 79,000 refugees from Nigeria. Cameroon is also home to over 250,000 refugees from the Central African Republic, who have been living in the East, North and Adamawa regions of the country since 2014. 

The Central African Republic was the world’s third worst humanitarian crisis in 2018, after Yemen and Syria, measured by the proportion of the population dependent on humanitarian aid. One in four people have been displaced from their homes. Last year, donor countries contributed less than half of the funds needed to meet the humanitarian needs of the country. The government signed a peace agreement with 14 armed groups in the country in February 2019. This is the seventh peace agreement since 2012. 

At the start of 2019, there were 1.9 million internally displaced people in South Sudan, and 2.3 million people had sought refuge in neighbouring countries. The parties to the conflict signed a peace agreement in September 2018, but have failed to form a transitional government. Although the fighting has lessened, violence continues in several parts of the country. Meanwhile, aid is critically underfunded and the humanitarian situation is getting worse, with millions of people facing a growing hunger crisis. 

In North Africa, the situation in Libya deteriorated sharply in 2018. At least 70,000 people were driven from their homes because of violence and conflict that year, more than twice as many as the year before. Hostilities in and around cities have destroyed infrastructure and access to basic services. The spring of 2019 has seen renewed fighting in the capital Tripoli. 

The humanitarian crisis in Somalia has been going on for decades. The combination of conflict and drought continues to force hundreds of thousands of people to flee every year. Over 578.000 people were displaced inside Somalia as a result of conflict and insecurity last year. This is an increase of 50 per cent compared to 2017. During the first three months of 2019 alone, more than 137,000 people fled their homes because of conflict or drought, according to UNHCR. As with several other African crises, reduced funding for humanitarian aid work in Somalia has led to cuts in basic aid such as food, water, health and education for displaced people. 

In East Africa, support for humanitarian aid work in important host countries for refugees such as Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania was cut sharply in 2018. Tanzania currently houses 318,000 refugees, mainly from DR Congo and Burundi. Only 27 per cent of the appeal for emergency aid for 2018 was raised. Rich countries, which are implementing increasingly restrictive refugee policies, are providing less support to those countries that are still receiving a large number of displaced people. The East African region is home to about two million refugees, at the same time as the total number of people arriving in Europe is dropping dramatically.

The security situation has worsened in more and more areas of Afghanistan and 2018 was the deadliest year yet for civilians, with 3,800 killed and 7,000 injured. The parliamentary election in October 2018 became one of the nation’s bloodiest. In July 2018, large areas were hit by drought, and by the end of the year a combination of conflict, drought and hunger had forced 807,000 people to flee their homes. Over 371,000 people were displaced within Afghanistan as a direct result of the conflict. In addition, around 3 million are currently living as refugees outside the country, the vast majority in Iran and Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have felt forced to return to the war-torn country from neighbouring states. A report by the Norwegian Refugee Council shows that 7 out of 10 of those who return to Afghanistan are forced to flee again. 

In August 2017, 750,000 of the Muslim minority Rohingya people fled Rakhine State in Myanmar, crossing the border into neighbouring Bangladesh, where they now find themselves in a state of limbo. Denied formal refugee status and any attendant rights by the government of Bangladesh, there is no real prospect of their return to Myanmar, where they fear continued persecution and violence. Despite the efforts of the international community to engage the authorities in Myanmar and Bangladesh in brokering an agreement for the return of Rohingya refugees, progress in ensuring its principled implementation has been slow, and safe, voluntary and sustainable return remains a distant prospect. Nearly one million Rohingya refugees now reside in 34 overcrowded and under-serviced camps along Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar. In the Kutupalong camp alone, the world’s largest, some 632,000 refugees suffer from inadequate access to basic services such as healthcare, education and safe shelter. While Bangladesh continues to offer safe haven and support to this growing caseload, as a result of the rapid influx, the local host community has been severely affected. There is a strain on resources, with inflation and wage suppression attributable to the surplus of cheap labour. 

Inside Myanmar, attacks by the armed group Arakan Army and counter-attacks by the military have displaced 33,000 people in Rakhine and Chin states during the first four months of 2019. This will further complicate a possible return of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh. In north-east Myanmar, the ceasefire between the government and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has been temporarily renewed. However, there is still a high risk of new fighting and displacement in the area. Myanmar is also highly vulnerable to natural disasters. In August and September 2018, 150,000 people were displaced from their homes in the south-east of the country because of flooding.

An EU agreement with Turkey has resulted in a reduction of 90 per cent in the number of people travelling from Turkey to Greece since the peak year 2015. However, it has proved difficult to return asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey. The EU requires Greece to take responsibility for all asylum seekers who arrive in the country, and several countries, including Norway, have started returning asylum seekers to Greece. This has led thousands of people living under reprehensible conditions in congested reception centres. The situation in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek holiday island of Lesbos is particularly serious. 

Italy has used the agreement with Turkey as a model to prevent refugees from crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya, and is paying the Libyan coastguard to stop refugees and migrants off the coast and send them to detention centres where many are brutally abused. Italy’s Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, has refused to allow boats that have picked up stranded refugees and migrants to land at Italian ports, and is threatening to fine NGOs that violate the ban. These measures have led to a decline of over 80 per cent in the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Italy by sea in 2018, compared to 2017. 

Since it has become more difficult to get to Italy and Greece, the route from Morocco to Spain has become the most important. In 2018 it saw an increase in crossings of more than 160 per cent from the previous year, with more than ten times as many people using it as in 2015. In total, however, there were 24 per cent fewer people journeying over the Mediterranean in 2018 compared with 2017, and 84 per cent fewer than in 2015. The proportion of people losing their lives during the crossing has gone up because they have to choose more dangerous routes, and the Libyan coastguard, which is now patrolling the coast, lacks the rescue skills of European rescue services. A total of seven percent of all those crossing the Mediterranean in 2018 lost their lives. 

The EU and the Arab League met in February 2019 to discuss cooperation related to migration. The EU hoped to reach agreements with countries in North Africa similar to its agreement with Turkey, but the countries concerned and the African Union were all strongly critical of the plan. 

Despite the sharp decline in arrivals across the Mediterranean, 580,000 people sought asylum in the EU in 2018, demonstrating that people smugglers find new ways to enter Europe when others are closed. This is a slight decrease from the previous year, and half as many as in 2015 and 2016, but still far higher than the pre-2015 norm. 

Germany is the country that welcomes the most asylum seekers. France, Greece and Spain occupy the next three places. The decline is greatest in Scandinavia, which is partly due to border controls making it more difficult to move northwards in Europe. Norway received only 2,655 asylum seekers, the lowest number since the mid-1990s.