The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) published its annual list of the world’s ten most neglected forced displacement crises in Dakar. For 2024, eight out of ten are in Africa, with Cameroon topping the ranking. The country is grappling with three overlapping crises: the actions of armed groups in the north, violence in the two western Anglophone regions, and instability stemming from the Central African Republic in the eastern area. Despite 1.1 million internally displaced people and nearly half a million refugees, less than half of the humanitarian needs have been funded, and media attention has remained minimal.
Other Overlooked Crises Beyond Cameroon, the list includes Ethiopia, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Mali, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia. The only two non-African countries included are Iran and Honduras.
It’s the first time Uganda has appeared on the list, despite its exemplary welcoming policy: it has offered refuge to millions of people fleeing regional crises, particularly from Sudan, South Sudan, and Congo. However, Uganda is now nearing a breaking point, with the number of refugees potentially exceeding two million by the end of 2025, while international attention and funding continue to dwindle.
As for the Democratic Republic of Congo, the shift from third to eighth place does not indicate any concrete improvement: the number of displaced people surpassed the historic threshold of seven million in 2024, and funding cuts further threaten the already fragile humanitarian response.
Even the crises in Sudan and South Sudan, while not among the top ten on the NRC list, continue to generate severe ripple effects, pushing hundreds of thousands of people into neighboring countries and exacerbating instability and pressure on reception systems, especially in Uganda.
The NRC report highlights how these crises are marked by a double failure: a scarcity of resources and the indifference of the international community, which creates a spiral of humanitarian abandonment, media invisibility, and political paralysis.
The two non-African cases are Iran and Honduras.
In Iran’s case, the crisis is linked to a combination of internal and geopolitical factors. The country has faced significant social and political instability for years, with harshly suppressed protests, especially after the movement sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022. The repression has led to new waves of people fleeing abroad, particularly ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Added to this are regional tensions, international sanctions, and the authorities’ rigid border management, which make effective humanitarian assistance difficult. The result is a silent crisis, lacking media coverage and ignored by global diplomacy, despite the presence of thousands of Iranian refugees in neighboring countries.
Honduras has been one of Latin America’s most violent countries for years. Armed gangs, endemic corruption, extreme poverty, and environmental disasters (particularly hurricanes and floods) push tens of thousands of people to flee annually, often heading towards the United States. Many Honduran migrants, however, remain stranded in Mexico or other Central American countries, living in precarious conditions. Despite the regional scale of the crisis, the international system continues to neglect the root causes of forced migration in Honduras, focusing primarily on migratory flows northward rather than on the conditions of departure. Here too, as in Iran, the lack of adequate media and diplomatic attention contributes to the worsening humanitarian crisis.
