Global humanitarian crises are often presented in the media through images of human suffering. In many documents and reports, however, these images are often told in abstract indicators and numbers (indices, ratios, etc.) to inform governments and other stakeholders of the extent and depth of the crises. One of these, symbolic and dramatically intense at the same time, is the Doomsday clock. Released by a scientific community in 1947, the Doomsday clock is a visual manifestation of the world’s proximity to our existential demise due to a myriad of reasons, including environmental disasters, geopolitical tensions, nuclear threats, and conflict (the closer to midnight by clock standards, the closer to world’s annihilation) (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2026). Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations rely on actual numbers and statistics, for example, to plan and implement interventions for people displaced by conflict (Beaumais, 2023). In recent years, the doomsday clock and empirical reports on the numbers of internally displaced persons due to conflict have moved in parallel. The picture it creates is alarming if not unsettling, suggesting and revealing a world under tremendous strain and fragility.
Since the 2000s, people displaced by conflicts have increased steadily. In 2020s, the numbers even reached previously unseen levels. Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain in miserable conditions, plagued with hunger, jobless, and homeless. This paper argues the idea that the rise of these IDP numbers and the increase of global internal displacement incidences must not be seen in silos but part of a global pattern of instability symbolically illustrated in the Doomsday Clock’s proximity to midnight. This article contends that conflict-induced internal displacement manifests the human consequence of the same structural issues the world is facing; escalation of geopolitical tensions, nuclear threats, and intensified conflicts, that push the Clock closer to midnight.
The Doomsday Clock as a measure of systemic global risk
Born during the first few years of the cold war, the Doomsday clock is a symbolic yet chilling reminder of the potential occurrence of a world that turns into a nuclear wasteland. Scientists originally developed Doomsday clock to convey the idea that the world may be closing in to a nuclear annihilation. After a few years, this limited scope was expanded to include all kinds of threats capable of wiping out human life and civilization, nuclear or not, from natural risks to human-made. The Doomsday clock does not say that something terrible will actually happen to the world. But the clock is a tool for scientists to convey how they see world’s stability based on risks or threats we are facing (Sinclair & Silbersweig, 2025).
Unluckily for us, the clock, since 2010, has been consistently moving to a direction we do not want to be in – closer to midnight, which strongly suggests the advent of compounding and converging risks that threaten the very existence of humankind. Governments (intensified) pursuit of nuclear arms, flaring geopolitical tensions, widescale violence and conflict, and the unforgiving impact of climate change have all pushed the hands of the Doomsday clock to that point. Threats of nuclear arms, disruptive technologies, emerging and re-emerging disease all contribute to this predicament (Mecklin, 2025). In the early 2020s, the world has seen all the closest points to our doomsday so to speak. Dangerous times they say. Last year (2025), Doomsday clock registered the closest to date – 89 sec to midnight, this year (2026) dangerously too close to global disaster of catastrophic consequences (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2026). But the Doomsday clock is more than just a symbolic teller of what existentially confronts us. It also brings to light the underlying systemic risk that ripens the world’s ground for people’s internal displacement.
Conflict-induced internal displacement: trends and significance
Internal displacement remains to be a hallmark manifestation of conflict’s outbreak, intense or not. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are people affected by war who do not flee outside their countries. Nonetheless, they still lose access not only of their traditional communities, but also to their sources of income, to people they know, to public and social services, and to the protection they need. Indeed, IDPs are one of the most vulnerable segments of population (Tadesse & Tafesse, 2025).
For the last two decades, the scale and duration of global internal displacement due to conflict have significantly worsened. The surge of violent conflict in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan contributed to these global incidences with Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Yemen, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of Congo adding heights of internal displacement in more recent years (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2025). These sent many IDPs in protracted cases of displacement, some of whom have never returned home yet even after many years (Ferris & Kerwin, 2023).
So we can look at internal displacement not just as a consequence of war but a manifestation of on-going failure at the political and governance level as well as unresolved conflict and weak peacebuilding efforts. Internal displacement is therefore a phenomenon that can rightly be attributed to what is wrong about the world that the Doomsday Clock seeks to capture symbolically.
Parallel trajectories: do the indicators move together?
So the question is; how is the Doomsday clock related to this internal displacement trend? A closer examination reveals an interesting alignment. Times when global stability looks good, visualized through a clock further from midnight, reveal relative lower levels of internal displacement incidents as well. Just the opposite, periods marked with high tensions and risks symbolized by the clock moving closer to midnight, coincided with greater numbers of conflict-induced internal displacement. This alignment has been particularly observed mid-2010s.
As the hands of Doomsday clock push closer and closer to midnight due to escalation of tensions and crises around the world, incidents of internal displacement piled up. This is not to say that the two are causally related. But this is suggestive that the two, both the Doomsday clock and cases of conflict-induced internal displacement, are shaped by the same underlying conditions. While the Doomsday clock dramatically visualizes the accumulation of threats to humankind at the global level, numbers on internal displacement reflect how these threats are being actualized at the regional or local levels through forced movement or domestic migration. Indeed, the pair represents a trend in which a global crisis can be measured.
Conclusion
The Doomsday clock coinciding with displacement figures speaks volumes of our world under strain. The former is a terrifying warning of what awaits us, the latter allows us to see (initially) what the warning means in terms of human consequences. In the global order of things, their movement in the same direction for the past decades is a telling image of worsening instability of the world. This reflects the failure of states and institutions to find solutions that prevent further escalation of conflicts and violence around the world. Some may easily dismiss the Doomsday clock as it is symbolic rather than realistic, but for the millions of internally displaced persons around the world, the crisis that underscores that symbolism is not hypothetical but actual. Indicatively, some of them describe their suffering while at displacement as traumatic and painful (Khai, 2023; Mamed et al., 2025).
Anyway, what does the recognition of this parallelism mean to the arena of policy? The implication is that when incidents of conflict-induced internal displacements are increasing, the idea is to move beyond the thinking that those are just mere results of wars or conflicts that are being fought. The rising trends should lead us to the inconvenient truth about the world suffering under broader systemic risk. Continuing rise in cases of internal displacements should alert our policymakers to heed with strong commitment to eradicate the underlying causes of tensions and threats that fuel conflict and violence. The Doomsday clock is a good starting point. It not only tells the time when to act (which is now!), it also tells the story where to begin.
Dr. Zaldy C. Collado is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences at De La Salle University – Manila. He holds a PhD in Sociology with a specialization in Family, Health and Population. He specializes in conflict studies, particularly the experiences of vulnerable population in internal displacement as a result of war or violence. His publications cover a wide range of topics, including the consequences of war on food environments and family dynamics, and he is actively involved in several externally-funded research projects.
This topical paper is part of the special series on ‘Internal Displacement in a Changing World Order’, led by the Internal Displacement Research Programme at the RLI. The experts contributing to this series assess how rapid shifts in contemporary politics, plummeting levels of humanitarian aid and escalating global crises are impacting displacement-affected communities. The series ties into a recently launched 45-chapter “Handbook of Internal Displacement” (2026) that comprehensively addresses this issue.
KEYWORDS: Internal displacement, IDPs, conflict, crises.
Selected bibliography
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2026) It is now 89 seconds to midnight. https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/ (Accessed 15 January 2026).
Ferris, E. and Kerwin, D. (2023). “Durable Displacement and the Protracted Search for Solutions: Promising Programs and Strategies”. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 11(1), pp.3–22. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024231160454
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (2025) 2025 Global Report on Internal Displacement. https://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2025/ (Accessed 15 January 2026).
Khai, T. S. (2023). “Vulnerability to health and well-being of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar post-military coup and COVID-19”. Archives of Public Health, 81(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13690-023-01204-1
Mamed, G., Tefera, G. Bitew, M., Ngondwe, P., Wolde, A. (2025). “Conflict, trauma, and coping: The experiences of internally displaced people in northern Ethiopia”. Journal of Traumatic Stress. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.23146
Mecklin, J. (2025). “Closer than ever: It is now 89 seconds to midnight. 2025 Doomsday Clock Statement. Science and Security Board”. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Doomsday-Clock-Statement.pdf
Sinclair, S. J., & Silbersweig, D. A. (2025). “Apocalypse now? Mortality and mental health correlates of the Doomsday Clock.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 81(2), 126–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2024.2439762
Tadesse, G. A., & Tafesse, T. (2025). “Conflict-driven human trafficking, internally displaced persons, and legal responses in Ethiopia: the northern conflict in focus”. Small Wars and Insurgencies, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2025.2510308