Attachments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Collective efforts and coordinated action to find solutions to the 70+ million internally displaced globally is urgent. PROGRESS analyses data, amplifies voices and experiences of IDPs, returnees and host communities, and asks new questions to find solutions to prolonged internal displacement.
The most recent figures from 2022 show that 71.1 million Internally Displaced Persons live in 110 countries and territories, and of these, about 37.5 million IDPs live in only 15 countries. Mounting humanitarian disasters threaten to unravel decades of development efforts. The World Bank estimated that the global displacement figure may almost triple in the coming decades in the face of climate change impacts.
Given the rising number of IDPs in the world and the increase in protracted displacement, it is critical for the international community to harness its collective efforts to support solutions for the world’s more than 70 million IDPs. The UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement, the subsequent Action Agenda on Internal Displacement, and the ongoing independent review of Humanitarian Response to Internal Displacement, have re-focused attention on IDPs and many international actors are working hard to tackle the vexing challenge of finding solutions to internal displacement. On the data front in particular, the International Recommendations on IDP Statistics (IRIS) and the Data for Solutions to Internal Displacement (DSID) Task Force, established in 2021, made significant contribution to elucidate the extent to which IDPs are moving toward solutions.
Prolonged displacement and dependence on humanitarian assistance has far-reaching consequences, impacting multiple generations of IDPs, returnees and host communities who are some of the most vulnerable people in the world. The data and analysis in this report, and experiences of IDPs, returnees, and host communities suggest that finding solutions to displacement involves asking new questions about when and under what circumstances solutions to displacement begin.