Internally Displaced People

Okenge Sakina vient collecter de l'eau au puits de Lukwangulo, RDC. HCR/Brian Sokol

Internally displaced people (IDPs) have not crossed a border to find safety. Unlike refugees, they are on the run at home.

While they may have fled for similar reasons, IDPs stay within their own country and remain under the protection of its government, even if that government is the reason for their displacement. As a result, these people are among the most vulnerable in the world.

Although UNHCR's original mandate does not specifically cover IDPs, we have been using our expertise to protect and assist them for years.

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By the end of 2014, a record-breaking 38 million people had become displaced within their own country as a result of violence. A massive 11 million of them were newly uprooted during 2014 – equal to 30,000 people a day, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council's Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

UNHCR cared for around 26 million of the world's IDP population in 2014. The IDMC's Global Overview 2015 reported that the majority of the increase in new displacement during that year was the result of protracted crises in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan and Syria. In total, these five countries accounted for 60 per cent of new displacement worldwide.

Iraqi civilians suffered the most new displacement, with at least 2.2 million displaced in 2014, while at least 40 per cent of Syria's population, or 7.6 million people, have been displaced – the highest number in the world. Europe, for the first time in more than a decade, also suffered massive enforced displacement. This was caused by war in eastern Ukraine, where more than 640,000 people fled their homes.