Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) is the world's authoritative source of data and analysis on internal displacement. Since its establishment in 1998 as part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, IDMC has offered a rigorous, independent and trusted service to the international community. The work of IDMC informs policy and operational decisions that improve the lives of the millions of people living in internal displacement, or at risk of becoming displaced in the future.
IDMC provides different types of analytical tools for different purposes, and adjusts the temporal and spatial scale of its reporting to inform operational and policy decision-making at different levels - from the local to the global level - and across different sectors, from prevention and risk reduction, to humanitarian programming, post-crisis recovery and sustainable development.
IDMC's tools include:
The Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) . The annual flagship report synthesises the latest statistics, country/situation assessments, thematic and policy analyses. Each year it presents the most up-to-date estimates of new displacements by conflict and disasters, and the total cumulative numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) worldwide. The GRID is the global reference for internal displacement data and analysis and is widely used by policy-makers national governments, UN agencies, international NGOs, journalists and academics.
Internal Displacement Updates (IDUs). ‘Flash’ updates on new displacement events across the globe, published on a daily basis on an interactive map on IDMC’s website’s main homepage.
Country profiles . An overview of latest figures and analysis of internal displacement per country, including overview of causes and patterns of displacement, priority needs and vulnerabilities, and government policy and operational responses at national and sub-national level.
Research papers. Thematic, country and case study reports exploring different dimensions of internal displacement. Current research priorities include: 1) Economic impacts of displacement; 2) urban displacement; 3) displacement in a changing climate; 4) internal to cross-border displacement; 5) crime and displacement in Central America.
Global Disaster Displacement Risk Platform . An innovative tool based on IDMC’s probabilistic model for exploring and visualising disaster-related displacement risk metrics. This platform reveals how many people are likely to be displaced per country per year in absolute terms, and in relation to the size of the country’s population, in total and for individual hazards. Using this tool, users can also analyse the risk associated with specific displacement events within a given country, such as a cyclone that displaces 100,000 people or an earthquake that displaces 50,000 people.
Displacement Data Exploration Tool . A tool that lets users generate their own custom charts using IDMC’s displacement data, UNHCR’s refugee data and all indicators from the World Bank’s open data catalogue.
Internal Displacement Event Tagging and Clustering Tool (IDETECT). Using natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, IDETECT reads thousands of articles and UN and government reports per day and extracts from them key pieces of information about the cause of displacement and the number and location of people reportedly displaced. Using IDETECT, we can increase the scope of our monitoring and better identify incidents of new or secondary displacement.
Satellite imagery analysis. In hard-to-reach areas and situations where there are no actors on the ground who can collect and share data on internal displacement, we and our partners have developed tools to detect and quantify displacement by analysing high-resolution satellite images of housing damage and destruction.
IDMC is funded by the US Agency for International Development, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the European Commission, the International Organization for Migration, the Liechtenstein Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the German Federal Foreign Office.
A refugee, generally speaking, is a displaced person who has been forced to cross national boundaries and who cannot return home safely. Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) if they formally make a claim for asylum. The lead international agency coordinating refugee protection is the United Nations Office of the UNHCR. The United Nations has a second office for refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is solely responsible for supporting the large majority of Palestinian refugees.
Human migration involves the movement of people from one place to another with intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily, at a new location. The movement often occurs over long distances and from one country to another, but internal migration is also possible; indeed, this is the dominant form of human migration globally. Migration is often associated with better human capital at both individual and household level, and with better access to migration networks. Age is also important for both work and non-work migration. People may migrate as individuals, in family units or in large groups. There are four major forms of migration: invasion, conquest, colonization and emigration/immigration.
An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.
Forced displacement is an involuntary or coerced movement of a person or people away from their home or home region. The UNHCR defines 'forced displacement' as follows: displaced "as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations".
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an international Catholic organisation with a mission to accompany, serve, and advocate on behalf of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons, that they may heal, learn, and determine their own future. Founded in November 1980 as a work of the Society of Jesus, JRS was officially registered on 19 March 2000 in Vatican City as a foundation. The impetus to found JRS came from the then superior general of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe, who was inspired to action by the plight of Vietnamese boat people. JRS has programmes in over 50 countries. The areas of work are in the field of education, emergency assistance, health care, livelihoods, reconciliation, and psychosocial support. JRS is also involved in advocacy and human rights work. This involves ensuring that refugees are afforded their full rights as guaranteed by the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and working to strengthen the protection afforded to Internally displaced persons (IDPs). JRS's international headquarters is located in Rome at the Society's General Curia. The International Director is Rev. Thomas H. Smolich SJ.
A humanitarian crisis is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people. It may be an internal or external conflict and usually occurs throughout a large land area. Local, national and international responses are necessary in such events.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations (U.N.) body established in December 1991 by the General Assembly to strengthen the international response to complex emergencies and natural disasters. It is the successor to the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRO).
Development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) occurs when people are forced to leave their homes in a development-driven form of forced migration. Historically, it has been associated with the construction of dams for hydroelectric power and irrigation, but it can also result from various development projects such as mining, agriculture, the creation of military installations, airports, industrial plants, weapon testing grounds, railways, road developments, urbanization, conservation projects, and forestry.
Environmental migrants are people who are forced to leave their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local environment. These changes compromise their well-being or secure livelihood, and include increased drought, desertification, sea level rise, and disruption of seasonal weather patterns. The degree in which some of these changes occur can be reduced by means of climate adaptation projects. Climate refugees may flee or migrate to another country, or they may migrate internally within their own country.[2] Though there is no uniform and clear-cut definition of environmental migration, the idea is gaining growing attention as policy-makers and environmental and social scientists attempt to conceptualize the potential societal effects of climate change and environmental degradation.
The Norwegian Refugee Council is a humanitarian, non-governmental organisation that protects the rights of people affected by displacement. This includes refugees and internally displaced persons who are forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict, human rights violations and acute violence, as well as climate change and natural disasters.
Internally displaced persons in the United States are people from the Gulf States region in the southern United States, most notably New Orleans, Louisiana, who were forced to leave their homes due to the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and were unable to return due to a multitude of factors, and are collectively known as the Gulf Coast diaspora, are by standard definition considered IDPs. At their peak, hurricane evacuee shelters housed 273,000 people and, later, FEMA trailers housed at least 114,000 households.
The Fragile States Index is an annual report published by the United States think tank the Fund for Peace and the American magazine Foreign Policy from 2005 to 2018, then by The New Humanitarian since 2019. The list aims to assess states' vulnerability to conflict or collapse, ranking all sovereign states with membership in the United Nations where there is enough data available for analysis. Taiwan, the Palestinian Territories, Northern Cyprus, Kosovo and Western Sahara are not ranked, despite being recognized as sovereign by one or more other nations. Ranking is based on the sum of scores for 12 indicators. Each indicator is scored on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest intensity and 10 being the highest intensity, creating a scale spanning 0−120.
Azerbaijan has a large number of internally displaced people and refugees, mostly as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The First Nagorno-Karabakh war displaced 750,000 Azerbaijanis, with 600,000 of them being from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts and the 150,000 of them being from Armenia.
The Kampala Convention is a treaty of the African Union (AU) that addresses internal displacement caused by armed conflict, natural disasters and large-scale development projects in Africa.
Institute for the Study of International Migration is a private research institute located in Washington, DC. Founded in 1998 as part of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, it is associated with the Georgetown University Law Center. The Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) is an innovative multidisciplinary center that studies the social, economic, environmental, and political dimensions of international migration.
The problem of Kurdish refugees and displaced people arose in the 20th century in the Middle East, and continues today. The Kurds, are an ethnic group in Western Asia, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Present absentees are Arab internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled or were expelled from their homes in Mandatory Palestine during the 1947–1949 Palestine war but remained within the area that became the state of Israel. The term applies also to the descendants of the original IDPs.
Refugee crisis can refer to difficulties and dangerous situations in the reception of large groups of forcibly displaced persons. These could be either internally displaced, refugees, asylum seekers or any other huge groups of migrants.
The State Intelligence Agency (SIA) is a Bulgarian foreign intelligence service, which obtains, processes, analyzes and provides the state leadership with intelligence, assessments, analyses and prognoses, related to the national security, interests and priorities of the Republic of Bulgaria.
ACAPS is a non-profit, non-governmental project that provides international, independent humanitarian analysis. ACAPS provides daily monitoring and analysis of the situations in 150 countries, to support humanitarian aid workers.