Invisible and Forgotten: Displaced children hungrier and at more risk than ever

Today more people are on the move than ever before – more than twice as many as 10 years ago – with nearly half of them (41%) under the age of 18. More than 1% of the world’s population (103 million people) were displaced as of the end of 2022, and an estimated 1.9 million more people were projected to be displaced during 2023 even before the outbreak of conflict in Sudan. About two-thirds of refugees and asylum-seekers originate from countries experiencing food crises, and the recently released Global Report on Food Crises 2023 found that by the end of 2022, 73 million forcibly displaced people lived in food crisis countries/contexts. Last year, 55 of the 58 food crisis countries/contexts examined were hosting roughly 20 million refugees and asylum seekers, a marked jump from the 15 million hosted across 52 of the countries/contexts of concern in 2021. Similarly, by the end of 2022, 25 of the report’s identified food crisis countries/contexts were home to nearly 53 million internally displaced people and the list of countries/contexts with the highest populations of internally displaced people nearly matched that of those hosting the largest populations enduring ‘crisis’ levels of food insecurity or worse (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 3+).