Prepared by: The Media and Communication Department at the Arab Network for Early Childhood 

(Monday, 15 July, 2024)

“Millions of families are having their lives torn apart by conflict and violence. We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities”

(Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, 14 May 2024)

As conflicts, persecution, violence, and violations of human rights and children intensify, the end of 2023 saw a record number of people forcibly displaced, both internally and externally. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), this number reached 117 million and 300,000 people. While children (under the age of 17) represent 30% of the world’s population, they make up 40% of all forcibly displaced people, according to the UNHCR, or approximately 47 million. By the end of last year, Save the Children raised these figures to more than 50 million, the equivalent of 29,000 displaced children daily. 

According to UNICEF, in a statement last year, “the number of children forcibly displaced from their homes has doubled over the past decade,” compared to about 20 million and 600,000 in 2010, and at a faster rate than the number of displaced adults, according to Save the Children. 

However, the problem is not just the steadily rising numbers but three main issues: 

First, The needs associated with the displacement of children and the resulting crises, which Save the Children summarized as follows: 

– No or limited access to education 

– Not having enough to eat 

– Lack of access to healthcare 

– Exposure to abuse and violence 

– The need for psychosocial support after the events children have witnessed 

– Financial difficulties forcing children into dangerous activities, including crime, child labour, sexual exploitation, or joining armed groups.  

Second, there has been a lack of response at both governmental and non-governmental levels, in line with the rising numbers. UNICEF expressed this dilemma last year as “accelerating displacement has outpaced efforts to integrate and protect refugee and displaced children,” and “global response capacity is facing serious strain, and the response in many governments is weak to ensure that every refugee and displaced child continues to have access to education and health services and grows to realize their full potential.”

Third, Children are largely absent from displacement data, making it difficult to understand their needs, aspirations, and potential and to identify appropriate policies and programs to respond, as Save the Children pointed out in its data in February of this year. 

Let’s return to the general numbers to understand the picture more precisely. In a detailed report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), forced displacement at the end of 2023 shows an increase of 8%, or 8.8 million people, compared to the end of 2022, and 58 million people in nine years. One in every 69 people globally, or 1.5% of the world’s population, is displaced. This is almost double the number of people displaced a decade ago, which was one in 125 persons. It also shows that nearly 3 out of 4 refugees, or 73%, come from just five countries: Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Ukraine.

The report mainly focuses on analysing trends and changes in forced displacement from January to December 2023. Unless otherwise noted, most of the data is based on information received as of May 17, 2024. 

According to the report, 75% of the forcibly displaced are hosted by low- and middle-income countries, while 69% are hosted by their countries’ neighbours. Lebanon ranks second in the world in hosting refugees (1 in 6), while Jordan ranks fifth (1 in 16). 

Children in Arab countries are most affected 

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), forced internal displacement reached a record high of 75 million and 900,000 people at the end of 2023, 68 million and 300,000 of whom were displaced due to conflict and violence, while 7 million and 700,000 were displaced due to natural disasters. In its annual global report issued on May 14, 2024, IDMC stated that the number of internally displaced people has increased by 50% over the past five years, noting that the largest increase occurred in 2022 and 2023.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirms that the majority of the forcibly displaced remain within their own countries (58% by the end of 2023). Sudan has the highest number of internally displaced persons ever recorded. The Darfur region has the highest displacement rate of over three million people as of June 30, 2024. According to Save the Children, children in Sudan and Somalia have been the most affected by waves of forced displacement (end of 2023). 

As of 30 June 2024, Sudan had more than 10 million internally and externally displaced people, more than in the previous 14 years combined. According to UNHCR, the number of refugees from Sudan to neighbouring countries and asylum seekers has reached 1.8 million, an increase of at least 820,000 from last year. Most have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, including South Sudan, Egypt, the Central African Republic, Chad, and Ethiopia. Some have returned to their homes or homeland in very poor conditions. 

According to UNHCR figures, Chad is receiving the highest number of refugees and asylum seekers from Sudan, exceeding 600,000 people as of June 28 of this year. This comes at a time when Sudan was already suffering from a dire humanitarian situation with about 3.6 million internally displaced people before the outbreak of the current conflict and a minimum of one million refugees from outside Sudan, mainly from South Sudan, Syria, Eritrea and Ethiopia. 

As the fighting continues, thousands continue to be displaced daily inside and outside the country. Sudan has the largest child displacement crisis in the world, with nearly three million displaced children in desperate need of support that is not closing the gap. 

In the Gaza Strip, which has been witnessing genocide for months, displacement during the last three months of 2023 represented about 17% of the total conflict-related displacement in the world in 2023, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC). According to UNRWA estimates, two-thirds of Palestinian refugees covered by its mandate in the Gaza Strip became internally displaced at the end of last year, with hundreds of thousands forced to be displaced multiple times. The Israeli occupation authorities have repeatedly forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees, including children, from several areas, neighbourhoods and shelters. The most recent of these orders affected neighbourhoods in Gaza City under the pretext of a military operation. On July 9, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCR) deplored the orders, stating that “Palestinians in Gaza have nowhere else to go.” 

The OHCR criticized the intensification of Israeli strikes on southern and western Gaza City, the same areas to which the IDF ordered residents to relocate. On July 8, the army also targeted the UNRWA headquarters west of Gaza City, an area where residents were again told to relocate. Since the beginning of the genocide, Israel has massacred thousands of residents and displaced persons, including children, in areas described as safe since the beginning of the genocide. Conflicting maps published by the Israeli military ordering IDPs to move to “safe” areas have caused confusion among the population, causing them to move in conflicting directions. In the occupied West Bank, 2023 was a record year for the displacement of children, along with killings by the Israeli army and settlers, both armed and unarmed, and arrests. 

In Syria, the years-long tragedy continues. “Displacement remains one of the most severe and prolonged consequences of the war,” according to Human Rights Watch. UNHCR figures recorded a 174,000 increase in the number of people displaced inside and outside the country, reaching 7.2 million at the end of last year. The number of displaced and refugee Syrians reached 13 million 800,000 at the end of last year, spread across 137 countries.

In northeastern Syria, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people still live in overcrowded, under-resourced temporary camps and shelters, some of which do not receive sustainable or adequate assistance, according to Human Rights Watch. In the context of the escalating debate on the Syrian refugee issue and the unrest in some host countries, most recently the attacks in Kayseri, Türkiye, and other areas and the deportation of some families as a result, international organizations have documented the forced and unlawful deportation of Syrian families from some countries over the years, including Türkiye. In 2023, Human Rights Watch documented Lebanon’s unlawful deportation of thousands of Syrians to Syria, including families and unaccompanied children. 

In April, UNICEF summarized the situation of Syrian children, and displaced Syrians in particular, as follows: Repeated cycles of violence and displacement, severe economic crisis and deprivation, disease outbreaks and devastating earthquakes in the past year have left hundreds of thousands of children vulnerable to long-term physical and psychosocial effects.

Turning to Somalia, the country was one of the five countries with the highest number of new displacements due to conflict or violence last year, along with Sudan, Syria, Congo, and Myanmar. Its children were also among the most affected by waves of forced displacement, along with Sudan, at the end of 2023. According to UNHCR, 66% of internally displaced people in Somalia are children, forming one of the countries with the highest proportion of children in the internally displaced population. 

According to the Network Against Food Crises, 39% of the population (6.6 million) face high levels of acute food insecurity, including 2.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs). Also, 1.8 million children under the age of five were acutely malnourished as of the end of August 2023. 

Between wars, conflicts, armed conflicts, genocides, and natural and unnatural disasters, young children are always the weakest link. Tracking the rise in displacement numbers over the decades may not offer hope, as wars are on the rise and children are increasingly displaced, but hope comes from working hard to protect displaced children, meet their needs and caregivers, and fulfil their rights as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in its entirety.