Internal Displacement

This blog post will provide a brief overview of what it means to be an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) and how this compares to being a refugee, as well as some statistics and examples.

An Internally Displaced Person (IDP) is someone who has been forced to flee their home due to conflict, violence, persecution or disaster, but has not crossed an international border. In contrast, to be a refugee, someone must have crossed an international border and be unable to go back. Therefore, IDPs depend on their home country’s government to provide them with the same rights, freedoms and protections that other citizens have under national law. However, their government may be unable or unwilling to do this. Conversely, refugees rely on international law and on the government of their host country.

Despite the different definitions, the experiences of IDPs can be similar to that of refugees. For example, both are uprooted from their homes and livelihoods, and face risks on their journeys to safety. These journeys can last for years, and it is common for places they settle in along the way to lack adequate shelter, food, water and health care. Both IDPs and refugees can also struggle to find work, and therefore lack an income to help them escape poverty.

A person may be an IDP who becomes a refugee, or vice versa. For example, someone may live for a time as an IDP, but then cross an international border when they find an opportunity to do so or if the situation further deteriorates. This person would then become a refugee. Similarly, a refugee may cross back into their country of origin, but not be able to return home, so would become an IDP.

As of 2023, there were 75.9 million IDPs over 116 countries and territories (just over double the amount there were in 2014). Of this total, 68.3 million were displaced due to conflict and violence, and 7.6 million were displaced due to disasters (e.g. droughts or earthquakes). The highest amount of conflict IDPs were in Sudan, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The largest number of disaster IDPs were in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

In 2023, the region in which the most IDPs were located was Sub-Saharan Africa - 34.8 million, with 32.5 million of these being displaced due to conflict and violence and 2.3 million due to disasters. A significant amount of the 32.5 million were in Sudan, where a new wave of violence began in April with the Sudanese Armed Forces clashing with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Numbers in Ethiopia were also high, though lower than they had been due to a peace agreement the previous year. The 2.3 million displaced due to disasters were largely a result of heavy flooding in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti) after years of drought.

For more information on internal displacement, please see resources from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (e.g. https://www.internal-displacement.org and https://api.internal-displacement.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/IDMC-GRID-2024-Global-Report-on-Internal-Displacement.pdf) and the UNHCR (e.g. https://www.unhcr.org/uk/about-unhcr/who-we-protect/internally-displaced-people).