Overview
As of the end of August 2022, Southern Africa hosts around 8.6 million persons of concern (PoCs) to UNHCR.
This includes 1.1 million refugees and asylum-seekers and 6.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), as well as others of concern, refugee returnees and IDP returnees. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) represents 77 per cent of the regional data.
Refugees, Asylum-Seekers and Others of concern
The region hosts 782,000 refugees, 279,000 asylum seekers and 36,000 others of concern. Among those 1.1 million PoCs, 74 per cent of them are from the countries outside of the Southern Africa region. The top five countries of origin are Central African Republic (243,000), Rwanda (242,000), DRC (220,000), Burundi (83,000) and Ethiopia (61,000).
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
In Southern Africa, there are 6.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). Most of them are conflictinduced, 6.4 million, but there are also natural disasterinduced IDPs, 0.5 million. The data on IDPs are reported in DRC, Congo, Mozambique and Zimbabwe
Movements of Persons of Concern
The total number of forced movements captured in the IOM Flow Monitoring Registry (FMR) shows 7,092 individuals since January 2022 (see Figure 2 (a)). In the same period, UNHCR tracked 19,081 movements across borders through the internal registration system, PRIMES, mainly (see Figure 2 (b)). The movements include new arrivals, returns and secondary movements, also called onward movements or cross-border movements. The data UNHCR manages are lacking in the movements involving South Africa, while IOM FMR presents the movements of South Africa involved, providing complementary insight about PoCs’ movements. In the end, IOM and UNHCR data collection mechanisms do not cover the same kinds of movements exactly, but there are overlaps in movements of forcibly displaced persons. The efforts should continue through interagency coordination to have a comprehensive identification mechanism of mixed movements in the region to leave no one behind.
Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees