By Muhammad Amaan
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has called for bold and coordinated actions to tackle displacement of people within their own countries.
Director-General of the agency, Ms Amy Pope, said in a statement on Tuesday that the number of internally-displaced people would continue to increase rapidly if such actions would not be taken.
Pope reacted to the Global Report on Internal Displacement 2025 (GRID) released by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
According to the report, a record 83.4 million people were living in internal displacement at the end of 2024 and disaster continues to drive much of the displacements.
The GRID is a crucial tool to shape policies, support evidence-based responses and inform durable solutions for millions of people living in internal displacements worldwide.
Key data for this report is provided by IOM through its Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) which is the world’s largest source of primary data on internal displacement.
In 2024 alone, 20.1 million new conflict-related internal displacements were recorded, with 9.1 million coming from only two countries, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the report showed.
Ms Pope said that the figures were a clear warning.
“The report is a call for preventive action, to use data and other tools to anticipate displacement before it happens.
“It also calls for the humanitarian and development sectors to work together with governments to develop longer-term solutions to prevent displacement,” she said.
According to the report, internal displacement of 83.4 million people by the end of 2024 shows an increase of 7.5 million from the 2023 figure of 75.9 million people, which was also a record.
The report showed that disasters remained a major driver of internal displacements in 2024, with a record 45.8 million new disaster displacements, nearly double the annual average of the past decade.
“A total of 29 countries and territories reported their highest disaster displacement figures on record, with cyclones accounting for 54 per cent of all disaster displacements last year.
“As the frequency, duration and intensity of weather-related events continue to worsen, these figures are expected to continue to rise,” the report said.
It also showed that the U.S accounted for more than 11 million movements after several major hurricanes prompted mass evacuations.
“Maintaining a strong evidence-based reporting on the world’s most salient displacement situations and identifying which interventions have been most impactful will be our objective in 2025 and beyond,” IDMC had stated in the report.
