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Madagascans walk amidst flooding from a tropical cyclone in the capital of Antananarivo on Jan. 23, 2022. Violence, disasters, climate change and human rights abuses have left more than 71 million internally displaced globally, the UN Human Rights Council reported Tuesday. File Photo by Henitsoa Rafalia/EPA-EFE
July 4 (UPI) — Violence, disasters, climate change and human rights abuses have left more than 71 million displaced from their homes within their own countries, the United Nations Human Rights Council reported Tuesday.
The UN is holding a conference in Geneva where it is discussing the state of internally displaced people across the world and the continuing threat climate change poses.
Paula Gaviria, the special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, shared that more people are internally displaced than ever before.
“The numbers alone can never encapsulate the scale, magnitude, complexity, and enormous human suffering confronted by internally displaced persons,” she said in the report.
“Displacement shatters lives for years and generations, creates severe hardship and suffering, breaks up families, cuts social and cultural ties, disrupts education and development, denies access to vital necessities, and exposes innocents to abhorrent human rights abuses,” she said.
Gaviria, who was appointed in November, was mandated to identify methods for responding to the internal displacement crisis. She noted that progress has been made by establishing global policies, with 62 organizations in 27 countries participating in a database on laws and policies.
Yet the high number of displaced individuals indicates many states are still not appropriately addressing the crisis.
“Behind the numbers are lives and personal histories of individuals who have been uprooted from their homes and survived unimaginable human rights violations and abuses,” Gaviria said.
She suggested the council should prioritize returning displaced people to their homes, supporting peace agreements and focusing on displacement caused by violence, conflict and climate change.
Her report came a day after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned at the same conference that climate change will continue to trigger further crises such as water shortages and global famine.
Türk called for immediate action on shoring up climate policies.
“Climate change is projected to put up to 80 million more people at risk of famine by the middle of this century,” he told the gathering, sharing that more than 828 million people faced hunger in 2021.
Türk leveled criticism at world leaders whom he said have been unclear or inconsistent in their efforts to curb their nations’ climate impact, or who have ignored the scientific evidence of its effects.
“We can protect our right to a healthy environment & transition to a just, green economy,” he tweeted on Monday. “We can because we know the science. Because we have the tools. Because there’s time to act. But that time is now. And those who must act — have the responsibility to act — are our leaders today.”
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