Report
Conflict and violence triggered 69,000 displacements in South Asia in 2023, with Manipur violence accounting for 67,000, according to a new report.
The report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) termed it the highest number of displacements triggered by conflict and violence in India since 2018
An internal displacement refers to the forced movement of a person, within the borders of a country.
This term refers to the events or occurrences that cause people to be displaced internally and not the number of individuals displaced.
Also, the same set of people can be displaced several times over.
Manipur Situation
On May 3, 2023, a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ was organised in Manipur’s hill districts to protest against the Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.
The march led to ethnic clashes between the Meitei and the Kuki communities, ultimately claiming more than 200 lives.
The Manipur High Court had in March last year called for recommendations to be sent to the Union government to recognise the Meitei community as a “Scheduled Tribe,” an official status designed to protect minorities from marginalisation.
The call was met with resistance from other local STs, including the Kukis.
Land disputes were also an underlying driver of the tensions
More than three-quarters of the movements took place within Manipur, but almost a fifth were to the neighbouring State of Mizoram and smaller numbers to Nagaland and Assam.
As the violence escalated, the Union government imposed curfews, shut down the internet, and dispatched security forces.
It also set up relief camps and established a peace committee for Manipur but the initiative was hampered by disagreements about its composition.
In World
Fighting in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Palestinian territories accounted for nearly two-thirds of new movements of people due to conflict in 2023.
Throughout 2023, there were six million forced movements of people caused by the violence in Sudan — more than in the previous 14 years combined.
It is the second-highest number of forced movements within a year after Ukraine’s 16.9 million in 2022.
World over, in 2023, the number of internal displacements (occurrences) resulting from conflict was 20.5 million.
Displacements can also happen due to natural disasters.
If those numbers are included, the total internally displaced persons go up to a record 75.9 million (7.7 million by disasters) in 2023
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