UN Report on Internal Migration

Table of Contents

UN Report on Internal Migration: Relevance

GS 2: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

Recently, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has released a new report on internal migration titled Mid-Year Trends Report 2021.

According to the report, around 50% people were internally displaced across 33 countries due to conflict and violence in the first six months of 2021.
The number this year is nearly 5% more than the number reported at the end of 2020.
The report also revealed that the trend of rising forced displacement continued into 2021, which resulted largely from internal displacement.
Around 40 lakh new displacements were reported by 18 countries — 50 per cent more than the people displaced during the same period in the previous year.
Much of the new internal displacement were in Africa, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Nigeria, Mozambique and Burkina Faso.
The lethal mix of conflict, COVID-19, poverty, food insecurity and the climate emergency has compounded the humanitarian plight of the displaced, most of whom are hosted in developing regions.

Conflict continued in Mozambique’s northern province, uprooting over 120,000 people.
A crisis of governance and instability in the rural areas of Burkina Faso impacted its civilians, fuelling the fastest growing internal displacement crisis.
Internal and cross-border mobility in the East and Horn of Africa contributed to around 6.5 million internally displaced persons (IDP).
Violence in Myanmar and Afghanistan also forced 217,000 and 318,500 people from their homes.
In Yemen, April’s heavy rains and flooding affected 7,000 people, 75% of whom were IDPs living in sub-standard conditions.
In Mozambique, UNHCR supported the government in developing a policy and strategy on displacement management that addresses all causes and phases of displacement, from prevention through to durable solutions.

Internal migration or domestic migration is human migration within a country.
Internal Migration examples: Internal migration tends to be travel for education and for economic improvement or because of a natural disaster or civil disturbance. Cross-border migration often occurs for political or economic reasons.