Every year, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) publishes its report on the world’s most neglected refugee crises. These are the countries where millions are displaced and exposed to violence, hunger, disease and dispossession.
Burkina Faso tops the list for the second year in a row, followed by Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mali, Niger, Honduras, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan.
“The complete neglect of the displaced has become the new normal,” said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the NRC, in a statement on the report.
“The political and military elite on the ground ignore the suffering they are causing, and the world is neither shocked nor compelled to act by stories of despair and record-breaking statistics.”
Here you will find everything you need to know about the refugee crisis in these countries, sorted by the most neglected countries.
What does it mean to be internally displaced?
An internally displaced person was forced to flee his or her homeland with little or no belongings and seek protection elsewhere in the same country.
Displaced people flee because they fear for their lives. But when they give up their escape, they usually have virtually no resources available to help them.
This means there is a lack of shelter, tents, food, water, medicine, hygiene facilities for women and girls, toilets, showers, clothing, safety precautions, comfort items or means of communication with the outside world.
Burkina-Faso
Since the late 2010s, Burkina Faso has become an epicenter of armed group violence in central Africa’s Sahel region, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands.
The government struggled to deal with the country’s security problems, and in September 2022 the military seized power.
According to the NRC, more than 8,400 people were killed in the violence last year, twice as many as the year before.
By the end of 2023, about two million civilians were trapped in 36 sealed-off cities across the country.
Cameroon
At the heart of the violence in Cameroon is the suppression of Anglophone protests against their exclusion by the Francophone government.
In 2016, a separatist conflict broke out when the government cracked down on protests in the English-speaking northwest and southwest.
Since then, more than 6,000 people have been killed in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon.
The escalating violence has forced more than a million Cameroonians to flee; by the end of 2023, 1.1 million people will be internally displaced, according to the NRC.
In addition to growing internal pressure, Cameroon also hosted refugees from neighboring countries, pushing the country to its limits.
Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo has suffered from armed violence for many years, with both the government and foreign actors supplying weapons to the conflicting parties.
By the end of last year, around 6.9 million people had been displaced throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo, most of them in the eastern provinces.
Since an escalation of hostilities in March 2022, more than 1.6 million people have been displaced from their homes in North Kivu in the east of the country.
Mali
The withdrawal of a 13,000-strong peacekeeping force in 2023 led to increased clashes between the state military and non-state armed groups in northern Mali.
Mali was left to its own devices in the fight against armed groups, but it struggled, and thousands of people fled their homes to seek safety elsewhere.
According to the NRC report, more than 340,000 people were internally displaced by December 2023.
Niger
A coup in July 2023 caused Niger to lose political and financial support from the West and break off relations with its regional partners.
Due to increasing insecurity and non-state armed groups in the Diffa, Maradi, Tahoua and Tillabery regions, more than 335,000 people have been displaced from their homes.
According to the NRC, the country also hosted 290,000 refugees and over 35,000 asylum seekers who had fled conflicts in neighboring countries.
Honduras
In 2023, people in Honduras faced widespread violence and organized crime, as well as climate shocks, deep poverty and hunger.
Nearly a quarter of a million displaced people needed assistance in the form of food, protection from violence and other essentials.
South Sudan
South Sudan has seen numerous armed conflicts since 2013, when a political dispute between the president and his vice president led to violence between forces loyal to them.
Economic decline, severe flooding, drought and a conflict in neighboring Sudan in 2023 exacerbated the situation and led to numerous displacements.
More than four million people were forced to flee their homes, including 2.2 million who left the country to become refugees.
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic has been plagued by violence since 2013, after Seleka rebels in particular overthrew then-President François Bozizé, leading to retaliatory measures, mainly by Christian militias.
According to the NRC, although internal conflicts have subsided somewhat, the northeast of the Central African Republic is affected by the war in Sudan and insecurity in the border area.
One in five Central Africans has been displaced within the country or has fled abroad due to ongoing violence, the report says.
Chad
After the outbreak of war in Sudan, more than 600,000 people fled to eastern Chad to escape ethnically motivated attacks in West Darfur.
Before the crisis, there were already more than half a million refugees living in Chad from neighboring countries such as Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Nigeria, as well as from Sudan itself, according to the NRC. Around 200,000 Chadians are also on the run within their own country.
Sudan
In April 2023, a war began between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Defense Forces, killing thousands of people and forcing millions to flee their homes.
According to the NRC, 1.4 million people fled across the border and more than eight million became internally displaced, making Sudan the largest internal displacement crisis in the world.