Each year, the International Rescue Committee releases a list of the 20 humanitarian crises expected to deteriorate the most over the next year. For the past decade, this report has helped us determine where to focus our emergency services and lifesaving support to make the greatest impact.
Editor’s note, June 5, 2023: The IRC released a Watchlist Insight report focused on the Central Sahel, a region warming at 1.5x the global average. Long-term economic underdevelopment and political marginalization are making communities in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger more vulnerable to the effects of both the climate crisis and protracted armed conflict.
Heading into 2023, countries across the globe continue to struggle with decades-long conflicts, economic turmoil, and the devastating effects of climate change. The guardrails that once prevented such crises from spiraling out of control—including peace treaties, humanitarian aid, and accountability for violations of international law—have been weakened or dismantled.
The human and economic costs of these crises and disasters are not equally shared. The countries on the 2023 Watchlist are home to just 13 percent of the global population, yet they account for 90 percent of people in humanitarian need and 81 percent of the people who have been forcibly displaced.
If we can understand what is happening in these 20 countries—and what to do about it—then we may, finally, have a chance to start reducing the scale of human suffering.
Here, we break down what you need to know about the 10 countries likely to face the worst humanitarian crises next year. For more information and to see the full list of 20, read the 2023 Emergency Watchlist report or our Watchlist at a Glance summary.
10. Ukraine: War creates world’s largest displacement crisis
The war in Ukraine has sparked the world’s fastest, largest displacement crisis in decades, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), pushing the country into the Watchlist for the first time since 2017. Many still in the country are facing winter without access to food, water, health care, and other essential supplies. The conflict also continues to have ripple effects across the world.
Ukraine is not higher on the Watchlist only because the huge scale of the international response helped to mitigate the impact of the war, at least somewhat, relative to other Watchlist countries.
