At last week’s Global CCCM retreat, team members of Joint IDP Profiling Service (JIPS) presented their work at the retreat’s market place, which gave different cluster partners and members the opportunity to network and get to know each other’s work. This was a key opportunity for JIPS to meet CCCM colleagues from the field to discuss their data-related challenges and explore potential new partnerships. JIPS also shared experiences with supporting a CCCM Cluster led camp profiling exercise in the Kachin and Northern Shan states, Myanmar and discussed different approaches to outside of camps profiling, particularly in urban contexts. 

In Kachin state, in northeast Myanmar, conflict between the Government and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) has caused an estimated 80,000 people to be forcibly displaced from their homes. Many IDPs are residing in a large number of camps and similar settlements dispersed across Government and non-Government controlled areas. Others are living in host families and dispersed in rural areas.

The JIPS support mission to Kachin was undertaken in collaboration with the Global CCCM Cluster and focused primarily on support to ongoing camp profiling activities, initiated by partners. Through a series of meetings with international and national humanitarian actors (in Yangon and Myitkyina), camp managers and other camp representatives, as well as a number of visits to camp settings, profiling officers worked with partners to refine the camp profiling process. Two workshops were conducted to facilitate this. The first looked at the overall scope of the process – refining its objectives and the roles and responsibilities of different actors – and revised the primary data collection tool with input from the pilot exercise. The second outlined the different stages of the process from data collection to reporting and dissemination.

The support mission led to the development of a comprehensive methodology, revised data collection tools and an operational plan for the initial implementation of a camp profiling process which will be a regularly updated activity designed to provide an overview of the situation in individual camps as well as cross-camp analysis. Since the mission took place, JIPS has also offered remote support to partners to develop a training strategy, training tools, an enumeration manual, database template and draft analysis/reporting plans.

CCCM partners worked collaboratively to finalise the reporting process, producing individual camp profiles and an overall analysis in the cross camp report. JIPS will support partners further during the second round of implementation.

For more information on the camp profiling exercise, browse the individual camp profiles or download the cross camp analysis from this page.

The Joint IDP Profiling Service was set up in 2009 as an inter-agency service based in Geneva, to provide technical support to government, humanitarian and development actors seeking to improve their information about internally displaced populations. Since then, JIPS has become recognized as a profiling hub. Our primary mission is to provide profiling field support either directly (on-site) or remotely, through technical assistance, training and the provision of tools and guidance.

Our focus is on internally displaced persons (IDPs) in protracted situations. However, JIPS’s collaborative ‘honest broker’ approach and profiling methodologies can be adapted to a range of displacement situations. Urban settings, characterized by mixed populations (migrants, returnees, refugees), are particularly well suited to JIPS’s approach. Profiling is possible and potentially useful in emergencies, not just protracted, stable situations.  Profiling could also support policy initiatives, such as durable solutions, or be incorporated into existing information gathering exercises such as national surveys or census.  Find more information here.

Photo: IDP Camp in Myanmar where JIPS supported a CCCM Cluster led profiling exercise

Source: JIPS