The silent struggle of internal displacement
Amid record levels of migration crossing borders and continents, the 2.8 million recorded internal displacements in the Americas in 2023 are often an afterthought—but they should not be ignored
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Migration is a hot button issue. 520,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap in 2023, 2.5 million encounters were recorded at the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, and 6.5 million Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. These are the types of numbers that get repeated and highlighted again and again.
At the same time, the over 6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the Americas and the nearly 3 million new incidents of internal displacement in the hemisphere in 2023 are generally swept under the rug, largely unheard of by those not directly working on the issue. Even though this challenge does not register in cross-border statistics, it is a silent but real struggle relevant all across the Americas, including wealthy North America. In fact, there were nearly 1.5 million incidents of internal displacements due to environmental disasters in the United States in the last 3 years alone.
Earlier this month, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) published their 2024 Global Report on Internal Displacement, covering data on conflict- and environmental disaster-caused internal displacement in 2023. Climate and environmental disasters have been the leading cause of temporary internal displacements in the Americas, causing 2.1 million movements in 2023 and leaving 50,000 IDPs still stranded by year’s end. Conflict and violence, meanwhile, led to over 600,000 new movements, while proving a key cause of longer-term internal displacement: nearly 6.3 million people in the Americas remained internally displaced by the end of 2023 due to violence.
For all those that get the chance to return home days or weeks or months later, many others remain in limbo. IDMC recorded over 6.3 million total IDPs in the Americas at the end of 2023, marking a 6% decrease from the end of 2022 but remaining on par with 2021’s figure of 6.2 million. And despite their magnitude, these figures are “conservative,” according to IDMC, as a result of limited data capacity in most countries across the region.
Colombia is the country in the Americas most deeply aware of the reality of internal displacement, with a long history of displacement due to an internal armed conflict that has lasted decades and refused to completely disappear despite peace accords and ceasefires. There are over 5 million IDPs in the country as of the close of 2023, an increase of over 300,000 new IDPs from the year prior. This year also marks the 20 year anniversary of the Colombian Constitutional Court’s ruling T-025, which historically recognized the rights of those forcibly displaced by the conflict and mandated that the state work to uphold them. Earlier this year, the Constitutional Court additionally moved to recognize the role of environmental and climate factors in causing forced internal displacement, an initiative some lawmakers have looked to legislatively enshrine, as well.
Violence and conflict have also sparked internal displacement in much of Northern Central America and Mexico. The violent expansion of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and competition over illicit economies in Mexico has fueled increasing violence, and thus displacement, in recent years, with internal displacement incidents caused by violence or conflict increasing by nearly 20% between 2022 and 2023. Haiti, too, has been particularly devastated by violence-caused internal displacement. Gangs have wrested control of the Caribbean nation and sparked the displacement of hundreds of thousands—in addition to the hundreds of thousands more that have taken any and all opportunities possible to flee the country. As of mid-March, there are more than 360,000 IDPs in Haiti, and IOM expects this figure to soon exceed 400,000.
In recent weeks, however, it has been Brazil that has been most at the forefront of internal displacement in the Americas. Heavy rains and floods in the south of the country impacted millions, displacing over 580,000 people. This came after controversial reports that the government had been informed in 2015 of the high risk of floods but had ignored the calls to action, highlighting the importance of public policy to identify communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and then to take action to address the relevant concerns—whether that mean building new resilient infrastructure, developing robust emergency plans, or conducting planned relocations before a crisis strikes. In response to the current emergency, legislators have introduced a new bill to establish a National Policy for Environmental and Climate Displaced Persons (PNDAC, by its initials in Portuguese).
The incident has also highlighted the unique and often disproportionate impact of climate change on migrants and refugees, displaced once more. Agência Brasil, for example, covered stories of discrimination against Haitian and Venezuelan migrants in emergency shelters in southern Brazil. 43,000 refugees and others in need of international protection were impacted by the heavy rains and floods, according to UNHCR. In a similar vein, 2019’s Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas infamously swept away informal shanty town communities that were a cornerstone of the country’s vulnerable Haitian population.
Sadly, this is just a small glimpse of the impact of internal displacement across the globe. As a primarily domestic concern, it is an often forgotten component of human mobility, particularly from the perspective of Global North countries that are far more concerned about migration that crosses borders (and continents). Even still, internal displacement can in fact lead to international migration, as highlighted by a recent IOM survey of deported Haitians, 23% of whom reported having been internally displaced prior to their emigration. Internal displacement across the Americas is a quiet crisis of grave proportions that we must not ignore.