What You Need to Know about the World's "Internally Displaced People"

Carrying whatever possessions they can, women arrive at a camp for Internally Displaced People (IDPs) established next to a base of the African Union Mission for Somalia (AMISOM) near Jowhar. UN Photo/Tobin Jones One overlooked aspect of the global conversation on conflict, disaster and humanitarian affairs is internal displacement and the plight of internally displaced people, or IDPs. Like refugees, IDPs have been forced from their home by conflict or disaster. But unlike refugees, they have not crossed an international border and are not afforded the kind of legal protections embedded in widely adopted international treaties like the Refugee Convention. Still, as my guest Alexandr Bilak a explains, the number of IDPs around the world is actually greater than the number of refugees. Bilak is director of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and we caught up as her organization released its latest flagship annual report Global Trends in Internal Displacement. We run through th…