(Geneva) The world had a record number of 120 million forcibly displaced people at the end of April, a number which continues to increase and “a terrible indictment on the state of the world”, denounced the UN on Thursday.

The wars in Gaza, Sudan and Burma have contributed significantly to the increase in the number of people forced to flee their homes for more than a year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in its annual report.

“War remains the major driver of mass displacement,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told a press briefing in Geneva.  

At the end of last year, 117.3 million people were displaced.

That’s almost 10 million more than a year earlier and marks 12 consecutive years of increases.  

There are also almost three times as many people forcibly displaced as in 2012 and the number of displaced people is now equivalent to the population of Japan.

Filippo Grandi told AFP that he saw in this number a “terrible indictment on the state of the world”.

There is a palpable increase in crises and climate change is further stoking the embers of conflict across the world.

Last year, UNHCR declared 43 emergencies in 29 countries, more than four times what was the norm just a few years ago, Grandi insisted.  

He deplored “the way in which conflicts are conducted… in total disregard” of international law, and “often with the specific aim of terrorizing populations”, which “of course” contributes to further strengthening the phenomenon.

Filippo Grandi acknowledged that there currently appeared to be little hope of reversing the trend.  

“Unless there is a change in international geopolitics, unfortunately I see this number continuing to rise,” he said.  

The number of refugees and others in need of international protection rose to 43.4 million, the statement said.  

The agency attempted once again to refute the – false – perception that all refugees and other migrants are heading to rich countries.  

“The vast majority of refugees are hosted in countries neighboring their own, with 75% residing in low- and middle-income countries that together produce less than 20% of global income,” the report says.  

The civil war raging in Sudan since April 2023 has displaced more than nine million additional people, leaving nearly 11 million Sudanese uprooted by the end of 2023, UNHCR said.  

And the numbers continue to rise. Grandi stressed that many people continue to flee to neighboring Chad, which has hosted some 600,000 Sudanese over the past 14 months.  

“Hundreds and hundreds of people cross a devastated country every day to go to one of the poorest countries in the world,” he told AFP. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma, millions more people were also displaced last year by heavy fighting.  

And in the Gaza Strip, the UN estimates that 1.7 million people – 75% of the population – have been displaced since the war Israel launched in retaliation for the Hamas attack on its territory on October 7.  

As for Ukraine, which is fighting against Russian invasion, around 750,000 people were newly displaced within the country last year, with a total of 3.7 million internally displaced people registered at the end of 2023.

And the number of Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers increased by more than 275,000 to six million, the statement said.  

Syria remains the world’s largest displacement crisis, with 13.8 million people still forcibly displaced within and outside the country, UNHCR said.