Last year marked the 15th year that the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center started keeping track of internally displaced people around the world. Created at the request of the United Nations, the IDP database has been monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement in more than 50 countries. In 1998, it recorded 19.3 million IDPs.
The number of IDPs around the world had increased significantly just five years after the database was established. Nearly 25 million people were forced to relocate that year due to armed conflict and human rights violations. But, unlike refugees who left their home countries, these IDPs “received much less attention, although their number is nearly twice as high, and their plight is often even worse than that of refugees.”
IDMC’s 2013 report, which was released this month, notes even larger numbers and further underscores the urgent need to address worldwide internal displacement. At the end of 2013, IDPs driven away by armed conflict, “generalized violence” and human rights violations numbered 33.3 million — up 16 percent from the 28.8 million reported IDPs in 2012.