When people are forced to flee their homes, the first question is often how many. But this number alone doesn't tell the full story of internal displacement or how to respond. To meet displaced people's needs, we also need to know who is displaced. Sex and age disaggregated data (SADD) helps answer that question.
Fanny Teppe
Data and Analysis Coordinator
Internal displacement does not affect everyone in the same way. A child fleeing conflict, an elderly person caught in a disaster, or a woman escaping violence each face different challenges and risks. Yet, these individual experiences are often invisible in the data used to guide humanitarian responses, development planning and policymaking.
Making displaced people visible
SADD doesn’t capture every individual need, but it reveals who is most affected by internal displacement: women, children, or older adults, each facing distinct challenges and vulnerabilities.
For example, a high number of displaced children signals urgent needs for education and nutrition. A large population of older adults requires tailored healthcare and mobility assistance. SADD also highlights less visible risks such as adolescent girls facing barriers to education or boys vulnerable to recruitment in conflict zones.
While it has limitations, SADD provides a crucial foundation for action. It helps identify groups that require deeper assessments and guides more targeted, equitable policies and programmes from governments, development agencies and other actors. That is why SADD is essential: it moves beyond broad averages towards responses tailored to the diversity of displaced populations.
What the data tells us
By the end of 2024, 34.4 million children were living in internal displacement, each facing distinct and often overlooked challenges that threaten their safety, development and future. Around 30 million, nearly nine in ten, were displaced by conflict and violence.
In countries like Burkina Faso, Haiti and Sudan, children make up more than half of the displaced population. The impacts they face often have long-lasting consequences on their well-being, opportunities and life ahead.
Sudan has become the world’s largest child displacement crisis, with 6.1 million displaced children, more than one in four children in the country. Beyond the immediate suffering, this crisis threatens to limit education, stability, and opportunity for an entire generation.
Gendered realities of displacement
Displacement also deepens existing gender inequalities. Women and girls often face increased risks of gender-based violence, insecurity, and limited access to healthcare and education.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, clinics in displacement camps report an average of 70 survivors of sexual assault each day, most of them women and girls, a stark reminder of how insecurity and displacement exacerbate gender-based violence.
In Ukraine, women make up 58 per cent of internally displaced persons. This reflects gendered conflict dynamics as many men remain to fight or defend their communities. This gender imbalance affects healthcare, livelihoods, and long-term recovery, with women often carrying the burden of care while trying to rebuild their lives.
Closing the data gap
Despite its importance, accurate SADD is often unavailable. To fill this gap, IDMC uses proxy data based on UN population projections to estimate the sex and age of internally displaced populations where direct data is missing, assuming that the sex and age of distribution of IDPs mirrors that of the national population.
However, these national-level estimates based on census averages don’t always reflect how a country’s population is affected by displacement in practice.
In Haiti, for example, observational data from 2024 showed that proxy estimates overestimated adults and underestimated young children. Children under five were underestimated by 83,000, while adults aged 18 to 59 were overestimated by 189,000. Such discrepancies matter because they risk overlooking critical needs and misallocating resources.
Even with its limitations, SADD still provides a valuable starting point for understanding displacement dynamics and informs targeted, inclusive responses.
From insights to action
Sex and age disaggregated data plays an important role in informing more inclusive and targeted support for IDPs. While not used as a standalone basis for programme design, it provides an essential starting point for understanding the composition of displaced populations. IDMC works with partners, including UNHCR, to strengthen the availability and quality of this data, helping ensure that responses across sectors are better aligned with the realities on the ground.
IDMC’s displacement data is publicly available through the Global Internal Displacement Database (GIDD), which includes figures disaggregated by sex, age and cause of displacement. Users can download annual data on the number of internally displaced people from 2009 to 2024, where available.
By refining our data and integrating diverse sources, we can help governments, development agencies and humanitarian actors design policies and responses that reflect the realities of displacement. Because when we see people clearly in the data, we are better positioned to stand with them in real life.