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Criminal violence and weather-related disasters caused 31 thousand people in Mexico to flee their homes in 2018, according to a report issued by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) .
Violence related to drug trafficking alone caused the displacement of 11 thousand people in states such as Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa , among others.
“People displaced in the state of Guerrero are constantly exposed to extortion and ciminality. These experiences of insecurity are one of the main factors causing the displacement,” the document reads.
Many cities have registered displacements due to violent activities related to drug trafficking, including Ciudad Juárez, Culiacán, and Tijuana .
However, the figure may be even higher since “data on the internal displacement and policies meant to address the issue are far from exhaustive,” the document states.
Moreover, the country also registered between 11 and 13 thousand new displaced persons due to the tropical storm Willa , which struck the country’s west coast with winds of up to 220 km/h last October.
The number of Mexicans that were forced to flee their homes due to natural disasters rose to 20,000 last year.
The IDMC estimates that around 338 thousand people have been displaced in Mexico due to climate crises , political violence, and conflicts caused by land disputes, as well as violence related to criminal groups.
Based on this, Mexico now ranks among the top 20 countries with the largest number of internally displaced persons, above Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Mali .
The document highlights corruption as another risk factor that could be causing the displacement.
“Mexico City, for instance, has strict construction standards, but corruption continues to jeopardize compliance. This could have some very serious consequences, as we have seen after the 2017 earthquakes,” the document states.
“Most internal displacement issues in the near future are expected to occur in urban settings,” the report warned, from a global perspective.
Created in 1998 , the IDMC is one of the most reliable information and analysis sources in the field and its data has helped forge policies implemented by the European Union and the United Nations .
Wildfires, heavy rains, hurricanes, and other natural phenomena have caused 1.7 million people to flee their homes throughout the American continent, whereas armed conflicts and criminal violence have displaced 400,000 people in Central and South America .
At the global scale, 41.3 million people in 55 countries are currently living away from their homes due to armed conflicts and criminal violence, “the highest record ever registered,” according to the IDMC.
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