Nairobi, March 4 (IANS) The Horn of Africa has some 26.3 million people living either as refugees or Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) disclosed in a report on Tuesday.
According to the report, 20.7 million people are internally displaced while 5.6 million are refugees and asylum seekers.
The UNHCR highlighted a rise in the number of those displaced following the escalation of conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in February. “Approximately 65,000 people have arrived in Burundi and 15,937 in Uganda from the DRC since January 2025,” the agency said.
It also revealed that Egypt holds the highest number of 1.5 million refugees from Sudan, followed by South Sudan at 1.05 million and Chad at 759,058.
The main causes of displacements in the Horn of Africa are conflict, climate change effects like floods and drought, and food insecurity, according to the UN agency, Xinhua news agency reported.
Data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development showed that some 66.9 million people were food insecure in the Horn of Africa at the end of January.
Last month, the European Union announced $4.13 million to support a joint project to protect vulnerable communities in the Greater Horn of Africa from the devastating impacts of climate extremes, conflict, and displacement, the World Food Programme (WFP) said.
The project will support 450,000 vulnerable people in Ethiopia and Somalia for two years by reducing the impacts of forecasted shocks before they become crisis through capacity strengthening of weather agencies to provide timely, accurate forecasts, enabling better community and government response, the UN agency said on Monday.
“Increasingly frequent and intense climate extremes such as droughts and floods are compounding existing drivers of hunger such as conflict, displacement and economic instability,” Rukia Yacoub, WFP’s Deputy Regional Director for Eastern Africa, said in a statement issued in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.
“As livestock and crops perish, livelihoods are lost, and hunger deepens,” the statement said. “Early action saves lives, builds people’s resilience to face future crisis, and eases the strain on limited humanitarian resources.”
The project will be implemented by the WFP, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Climate Prediction and Applications Centre of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development and the Danish Refugee Council.
The Horn of Africa, located in the easternmost part of Africa, is one of the world’s most conflict-prone and fragile regions. The Horn of Africa has a long history of protracted conflict, violent extremism, and weak governance and hosts a large number of refugees and internally displaced people. It is also one of the world’s poorest regions, with an estimated 57 million people living in extreme poverty.
The long-term impacts of Covid-19, climate change, protracted conflict, the war in Ukraine and reduced funding globally are all contributing to food insecurity in the Horn of Africa. The hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa is reaching unimaginable proportions as 23 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are highly food insecure and face severe hunger and water shortages. Relentless drought and high food prices have weakened people’s ability to grow crops, raise livestock and buy food for their families.
–IANS
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