World Facing Migration Crisis

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Published: 14 May 2007

World Facing Migration Crisis

At least 1 billion people will be forced from their homes between now and 2050, as the effects of climate change deepen an already burgeoning global migration crisis, predicts a new report by Christian Aid.

These future migrants will swell the ranks of the many millions of people already displaced by conflict, disaster and large-scale development projects.

The world currently has around 163 million forcibly displaced people, including:

· 25 million people displaced by conflict & extreme human rights abuses who remain within their own countries

· 25 million people displaced by disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, who remain within their own countries

· 105 million people displaced by ‘development’ projects such as dams, mines, roads, factories, plantations and wildlife reserves

· 8.5m people who are refugees. This means that they have fled persecution in their own countries and gone to other countries that have accepted their claims for asylum

The estimate of 1bn by 2050 comprises:

· 50 million people displaced by conflict and extreme human rights abuses. This assumes a rate of displacement of roughly 1 million people a year, which is conservative

· 50 million people displaced by natural disasters. Again, this conservatively assumes that around 1 million people will be displaced in this way every year

· 645 million people displaced by development projects such as dams and mines (at the current rate of 15 million a year)

· 250 million people permanently displaced by climate change-related phenomena such as floods, droughts, famines and hurricanes

· 5 million people will flee their own countries and be accepted as refugees

The vast majority will be from the world’s poorest countries and urgent action by the world community is needed if the worst effects of this crisis are to be averted, says Human tide: the real migration crisis.

John Davison, the report’s lead author, said:

“We believe that forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the developing world”.

Published to mark Christian Aid Week 2007, the report warns that the world is now facing its largest ever movement of people forced from their homes.

The predicted numbers of displaced people could dwarf even those left as refugees following the Second World War.

The impact of climate change is the great, frightening unknown in this equation. Only now is serious academic attention being devoted to calculating the scale of this new human tide.

Even existing estimates, more than a decade old, predict that hundreds of millions of people will be forced from their homes by floods, drought and famine sparked by climate change.

Security experts fear that this new migration will fuel existing conflicts and generate new ones in the areas of the world – the poorest – where resources are most scarce. A world of many more Darfurs is the increasingly likely nightmare scenario.

Most of those on the move will have to remain in their own countries – often at the mercy of the very governments which caused them to flee in the first place.

These ‘internally displaced persons’, or ‘IDPs’, have no rights under international law and no official voice. Their living conditions are likely to be desperate and in many cases their lives will be in danger.

While the situation in Darfur has received a lot of media attention, most other recent coverage has focused on economic migrants & asylum seekers, says the report.

Davison added:

“We hear a lot about people trying to come to Europe and other rich countries. But the real crisis is developing a long way away and remains largely unreported”.

’The Christian Aid report has been welcomed by some of the world’s leading experts on forced migration and displacement.

Dennis McNamara, Special Adviser to the UN Emergency Relief Co‑ordinator, and Director of the Inter-Agency Division on Displacement in the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said:

“Tens of millions of the poorest people in the poorest parts of the world are uprooted and lack basic assistance and protection.

They are the world’s voiceless and often inaccessible refugees.

As Christian Aid’s welcome new report says, their numbers can destabilise whole regions and may be an obstacle to building peace.

Their problems must be urgently addressed, both for humanitarian as well political and security reasons”.

Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher, acting head of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva (the world’s leading independent authority on people displaced by conflict), said:

“Often at the mercy of governments that are not willing or capable to protect them, internally displaced people are among the most vulnerable victims of conflict.

The global crisis of internal displacement is one of the great challenges of our time”.

Dr Roberta Cohen, former co-director of the Project on Internal Displacement at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, said:

“That tens of millions of people are forcibly uprooted within their own countries is both a terrible human tragedy and a threat to worldwide stability.

Christian Aid does an immense service in recognising climate change as a major factor underlying this growing crisis”.

Case studies in the report spell out in human detail how major internal migration crises have already developed in Sudan, in Uganda and in Sri Lanka.

The main studies seek to highlight equally devastating situations that are still developing with far less attention from the wider international community.

Colombia is second only to Sudan for numbers of IDPs, with many living in crowded slums on the fringes of the capital, Bogotá.

Originally forced to move by a decades-long civil war, this largely rural population is now seeing its land grabbed to make way for lucrative plantations.

Increasingly, this is to produce palm oil – a substance in high demand and found in many products in the rich world’s shopping baskets.

In Burma, ethnic minority groups have also been subject to decades of violence, displacement and persecution.

Their government is now using the space created to plan dams and other large-scale developments, including palm oil plantations, leading to further, vicious forced displacement.

Mali lies in the Sahel belt of semi-arid land that straddles sub-Saharan Africa and is one of the areas vulnerable to global warming.

Already farmers here are finding it impossible to live off the land in the way they have done for centuries. Erratic & declining levels of rainfall mean dramatically reduced crop yields – and people have to move in order to earn the money to feed their families.

The report marks the 50th anniversary of Christian Aid Week, the UK & Ireland’s first and largest door-to-door charity fundraising collection.

The organisation, then called Christian Reconstruction in Europe, was founded in response to the refugee crisis following the Second World War.

Further information

Human tide: the real migration crisis

Low Graphic version

Video: the human tide

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Inter-Agency Division on Displacement in OCHA

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Project on Internal Displacement at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC

The Climate of Poverty