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Internally displaced

IDPs in 2015
Total population
37.494 million
Regions with significant populations
Middle East and North Africa 13.933 million
Africa 10.762 million
Americas 7.113 million
Asia and the Pacific 2.879 million
Europe 2.804 million

Full

An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to flee his or her home but who remains within his or her country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.

At the end of 2014, it was estimated there were 38.2 million IDPs worldwide, the highest level since 1989, the first year for which global statistics on IDPs are available. The countries with the largest IDP populations were Syria (7.6 million), Colombia (6 million), Iraq (3.6 million), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2.8 million), Sudan (2.2 million), South Sudan (1.6 million), Pakistan (1.4 million), Nigeria (1.2 million) and Somalia (1.1 million).

The United Nations and UNHCR support monitoring and analysis of worldwide IDPs through the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

Whereas 'refugee' has an authoritative definition under the 1951 Refugee Convention, there is no universal legal definition of internally displaced persons (IDP); only a regional treaty for African countries (see Kampala Convention). However, a United Nations report, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement uses the definition of:

"persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border."


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