The number of people internally displaced by conflict and violence reached a record 32.3 million in 2025 — a 60% increase on the previous year and, for the first time since data collection began in 2008, higher than the number driven from their homes by natural disasters, which stood at 29.9 million. The figures come from the Global Report on Internal Displacement, published on Tuesday by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), a Geneva-based organisation that tracks forced movement within national borders.

Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo together accounted for roughly two-thirds of all new conflict-driven displacements in 2025, recording 10 million and 9.7 million respectively. Nearly half of all people currently living as conflict-displaced persons — some 31.4 million — are concentrated in just five countries: Sudan, Colombia, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. Sudan recorded the largest stock of internally displaced people for the third consecutive year, with 9.1 million. Notably, 46% of all conflict-driven displacements in 2025 were linked to international armed conflicts, almost double the share recorded the year before.

It is important to understand what these figures measure: internal displacement counts each new instance of a person being forced to flee within their own country, meaning the same individual may be counted multiple times if displaced repeatedly. In total, an estimated 82.2 million people were living as internally displaced persons at the end of 2025 — the second-highest figure on record, just below the 2024 peak of 83.5 million, and the first slight decline since tracking began. Of these, 68.6 million had been driven out by conflict, and 13.6 million by natural disasters. The slight overall decrease is partly explained by people returning in parts of Sudan, the DRC and Syria, as well as gaps in data availability.

Experts warn against reading any improvement into the decline. IDMC Director Tracy Lucas cautioned that the same people are often displaced again and again as conflicts intensify, while the systems designed to protect them are simultaneously being dismantled. Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, described the numbers as