The push: 10 ways emergencies move people around

The unluckiest kids on the planet

As a child, I moved countries twice, my father chasing job opportunities from South Africa to England to Canada. Despite the comfort I enjoyed at every stage of the three-year journey, I thought the world was ending.

Looking back, I was one of the luckiest kids on the planet. We chose to move. At no point did we flee our homes, just to stay alive.

We never confronted famine, or the terror of civil war. We never fled the chaotic aftermath of an earthquake, flood, or tsunami. But today, millions of people are doing exactly this.

They didn’t want to go

Every refugee or internally displaced person has a unique story. But the vast majority share something in common: they didn’t want to go. At least not like that. Not at that time, not in that desperate, terrifying way.

Abandoning their homes, communities and livelihoods wasn’t part of their life plan. But when disaster struck, they were left with little choice.

Working with the Emergency Response team at World Vison Canada, I see the power that natural and manmade disasters wield to shift entire populations against their will. Here are just a few ways it happens:

10 ways emergencies push people around:

A massive earthquake can destroy hundreds of thousands of homes, leaving huge regions of a nation uninhabitable. The 2023 earthquake in Syria had forced tens of thousands of people to move, some across borders.

Socio-economic crisis and political instability have prompted nearly 1 in 4 Venezuelans to migrate to other nations. The global economic crisis has perpetuated similar problems worldwide.

Persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations had forced 120 million people to flee for their lives by May 2024. By the end of that year, some 49 million refugees were children.

Climate change causes mass migration. In the decade preceding 2024, weather-related hazards caused some 213 million people to migrate within their own countries. Threats like drought and flooding can destroy livelihoods forever.

Gang violence has displaced a record 1.3 million Haitians within their country, the International Monetary Fund reported in June 2025. Many have been “forced to flee their homes multiple times,” noted Amy Pope, the organization’s director general.

In Amazon nations like Brazil, insufficient rainfall means rivers are drying up. Waterways people rely on for fishing, hydration and transportation just isn’t there any longer. People, including Indigenous groups, people often need to move.

People may be ordered to leave, as when in 2025 the Rwandan-backed rebel group M23 illegally ordered tens of thousands of people sheltering in and around the Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma to leave the area.

Health crises rarely cause cross-border migration—but it does happen. From 2008-2009, Zimbabwe endured a widespread cholera epidemic, forcing nearly 40,000 people to flee to neighbouring South Africa.

Even in Canada, floods and wildfires can cause heartbreaking evacuations, as thousands of people scramble to leave beloved homes and sacred lands. It’s estimated that Indigenous communities make up 42 per cent of wildfire evacuations in Canada.

Population growth and density can contribute to new crises—particularly in urban areas. As more people head to cities for access to jobs and services, overcrowded urban centres become more vulnerable to threats like epidemics and wildfires.

When World Population Day arrives each July 11, would you pray for the 23 million people worldwide who’ve been forcibly displaced due to armed conflict, hunger and natural disasters, as well as economic and political turmoil?

If you feel called to help people who are fleeing home today, please donate to our Emergency Relief Fund. Gifts can help provide life-saving assistance like food, water, shelter, protection, and education.

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