The global scale of internal displacement

Author: Kresta in the Afternoon Published on: July 10, 2017 Published in: A World in Pain

In 2016, which country had the highest number of its people displaced by conflict? Syria right? Wrong. Iraq? Wrong. Afghanistan? Wrong. Yemen? Wrong. Libya? Wrong. No, it’s a country that does not make the news like the other countries on that list: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to the Norwegian Refugee Council (Internal Displacement Monitoring Center), 922,000 citizens of the DRC fled their homes last year. This was more than Syria (824,000) and Iraq (659,000).

The difference with the DRC is that these people are mainly internally displaced, that is they are not refugees that have fled their country to a neighbouring (or not so neighbouring) country. Unlike many other conflicts in the world, thousands of Congolese are not fleeing across borders and asking questions of potential host societies about the duty to care for refugees, the best way to do so, the risk of encouraging others to come and the dangers of terrorism. Other conflicts do result in such refugees and thus get more attention.

But the conflict in the DRC is worthy of our attention. (Even if for no other reason than it gives us the opportunity to pray for, and give to, victims of it.) About 3.7 million people are internally displaced in the DRC, and the problem is getting worse: nearly 1 million have been newly displaced since the start of 2017 after violent clashes in the Kasai province in the south west of the country. There have therefore been more people displaced in the first half of 2017 than in whole of 2016. The conflict is long running – fights between various rebel groups and the government may have killed nearly six million people since the turn of the century. The current unrest is over when and how the current president, Joseph Kabila, should step down. The scale is obviously very large, but it does not make the evening news often, if at all.