If you feel like there are more conflicts in the world than ever before, you would be right. The Global Peace Index revealed we are experiencing the highest levels of global conflict since World War Two. As a result, there are now 120 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, which is also a record high. The UN’s Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 estimates that US$47.4 billion will be required to support 189.5 million people in the coming year, “for the war-weary survivor, the displaced family, the hungry child”. The total estimated number of people in need sits closer to 305m but the UN simply cannot afford to help them all.
It is hard to imagine the experience of being forced from your home, but I am going to try and paint a picture because it is important that we collectively understand the human cost of current world events. To do so I will be drawing on fifteen years in the field, working in detention centres and refugee camps, as well as my current work with Caritas Australia, where I speak regularly with partners in countries such as Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan, and Bangladesh.
The very worst of displacement happens repeatedly, or sees people stuck in refugee camps for years. We are seeing the former in Sudan and Gaza, and the latter in the Cox’s Bazaar refugee camp in Bangladesh. Lebanon, meanwhile, is home to millions of Syrian refugees and has seen thousands of Lebanese nationals displaced by recent conflict with Israel. That situation, and the likelihood of people returning home, is continuing to play out. In Ukraine we have seen mass displacement from border towns with people settling in a more semi-permanent way in host communities in other areas of Ukraine and in neighbouring countries such as Moldova.
In those protracted or repeated displacement scenarios I mentioned, people largely end up living in overcrowded schools that have been repurposed as shelters, in shacks they have constructed at the side of the road, or in designated refugee camps.
Most of these shelters, shacks and camps are not clean or comfortable in any way. If we take the school example, imagine living in a classroom with other families, with limited access to water, perhaps with numerous injured, sick, disabled, or elderly community members all trying to cope without accessible facilities. Imagine too that your children have not been to school in over a year. You are worried about their future and are noticing a slowing down of their overall development that you are powerless to stop because your days are spent trying hard to access basic needs.
You simply have no time to invest in them because getting food means queuing all day, regardless of the weather conditions. To try and make minor improvements to your living conditions you might also take time to pick through bins for scrap materials. You would likely have to queue for hours to use a bathroom or to collect water. While you queue, you might long for your home but have no idea if it still exists, dream of your favourite foods, or wish you could just go to work on a Monday morning.
Every day is the same but different in so many ways. It is a never-ending struggle of trying to get by, while never knowing when you might have to move again. Moving might mean leaving what little possessions you have scraped together behind as you flee at short notice, perhaps supporting friends or relatives with disabilities.
You might find yourself wishing for that move, because to be displaced is to continually long for change regardless of whether that change is good or bad. In the most extreme scenarios, displaced or detained people might refuse medical treatment because they see being treated as a prolonging of their suffering. They simply want their situation to end, even if that end is death.
Lat year was a bleak one for humanity. In the year ahead the global community must give more to those in need, while putting pressure on our governments to use all diplomatic measures to usher in peace. We must strive to set records with our humanity, compassion, and generosity, rather than continue to set records for conflict and suffering.
This article was written by Sally Thomas, Humanitarian Manager at Caritas Australia, and originally appeared in The West Australian.
