Number of people uprooted by conflict at all time high

The number of people driven from their homes but still living within the borders of their own country reached a historical high of around 26 million worldwide at the end of 2008, according to new figures published by the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR.

Friday 19 June 2009

The numbers of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) do not include the more than 2 million people who have fled the Swat Valley in Pakistan due to the conflict between the Pakistani army and Taliban forces, or those affected by the recent conflicts in Sri Lanka or Somalia, which would have made the figures even higher.

16 million refugees also fled their own countries’ borders to find safety. Developing countries which can least afford it carry the heavy burden of hosting 80% of all refugees.

Questions and Answers

Is conflict the key factor leading to such high levels of internally displaced people (IDPs) around the world?

Conflict is an enormous factor, but it’s impossible to separate between conflict and natural disasters. While conflict is the biggest cause of population movement within borders, natural disasters, such as flooding, also have a huge impact and are increasing due to global warming. Natural disasters, such as drought, often make conflicts worse as people struggle over increasingly scarce resources such as water, food or pasture for their animals.

A young girl carries her family’s mattress on her head as they flee from Kibati, 5 km north of the provincial capital of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

What are we are doing to help refugees and displaced people around the world?

Save the Children seeks to protect children who are the most vulnerable in an emergency. Children can’t protect themselves when they’re moved and are more likely to be abused when communities are broken up. They also fall sick more often and are more likely to be malnourished than adults.

IDPs are even more vulnerable than refugees because they often aren’t protected in the same way under international law.

We aim to help children and their families by meeting their immediate emergency needs, and by helping to identify longer term solutions.

Our work includes:

What does child protection mean?

When people flee their houses, and communities are separated, children often lose the support of their extended families or those who would have previously helped to protect them. Children might have become separated from their parents as they fled, or seen their parents being killed, leaving the eldest child to head their household and take care of younger siblings. Often they’re less able to access services, such as healthcare, because as children they can’t be registered.

We:
-remove children from harm, bring some normality to their lives and let them play with other children by establishing child friendly spaces
-register and refer children so they can receive social services, such as healthcare, housing or foster care, and reunite them with their families wherever possible. We help them to receive supplies, such as food aid.

What are the key challenges of working with IDPs?

Working within a conflict-affected environment often creates security challenges. The populations are often dispersed across a wide area, sometimes in difficult, hard to reach areas. For example, in Pakistan the majority of IDPs are living with host families (more than 80%).

Other facts:

Countries with major IDP populations include Colombia (estimated at 3 million), Iraq (2.6 million), Sudan’s Darfur (2 million), Democratic Republic of Congo (1.5 million) and Somalia (1.3 million).

All statistics have been sourced from the UNHCR Global Report 2008.

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