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Internally Displaced People Figures
About two-thirds of the world's forcibly uprooted people are displaced within their own country. They are known as internally displaced people (IDP) and UNHCR has been playing an increasingly important role in recent years in assisting them. According to the latest figures released by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), there were 26 million IDPs around the world in 2008, unchanged from 2007.
At the end of 2008, the UN refugee agency was caring for around 14.4 million of these IDPs, more than the total number of refugees of concern to UNHCR. Like refugees, they were forcibly displaced by conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations. UNHCR helps IDPs as part of a wider intervention by the international community.
The 26 million internally displaced civilians recorded in 2008 included 4.6 million newly displaced, up 900,000 from the previous year, and an equivalent number of returns, according to an annual NRC report.
The biggest new displacement in 2008 came in the Philippines, where 600,000 people fled fighting between the government and armed groups in the south. There were also large-scale displacements of 200,000 people or more in nine other countries: Sudan, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Colombia, Sri Lanka and India.
South and South-east Asia were the regions with the largest relative change in the number of IDPs in 2008, with a 13 percent increase from the end of 2007. Africa was the most affected continent, with 11.6 million IDPs in 19 countries, though this figure was down nine percent on 2007.
The countries with the largest number of internally displaced in 2008 were the Sudan, Colombia and Iraq.