“We need the full picture of global displacement to be acknowledged. To limit access to assistance and protection according to lines on a map would be a failure of humanity,” urges Egeland. “Internal displacement must be brought back on to the global agenda.”
Internally displaced people off the agenda
In 2016 global policy commitments to internally displaced people lost momentum. That happened in stark disconnection from the reality and scale of internal displacement.
40.3 million people were displaced within their own country at the end of 2016 as a result of conflict, according to NRC's Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. This is not a new development: since 1990, the number of people internally displaced by conflict measured at the end of each year has been nearly twice the number of refugees.
Today, Syria and Colombia are the countries with the highest number of people living in displacement, both seeing more than six million people displaced within their own borders. Iraq and Sudan follow with over three million internally displaced people. The figures are also high in Yemen, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan.
Lack of funding
NRC’s Jan Egeland calls for enhanced international support to the internal displacement crisis.
“For example, the support to each Syrian refugee and member of the host communities in the region, amounts to more than twice as much as the support to each person displaced or in need inside Syria,” he says.
“It is not any cheaper to provide assistance inside Syria, than in the region, rather the other way around. Also, the needs are more pressing for those fleeing inside Syria, than for the refugees who have been able to escape the war,” says Egeland.
We must ensure that focus on the refugee and migration challenges does not divert attention and funding away from the needs of the millions of people living in internally displacement.
Largely excluded
Overall stronger humanitarian, development and political efforts are crucial to meet the UN secretary general’s target to reduce internal displacement by at least 50 per cent by 2030 and to ensure that internally displaced people are not left behind.
Still, at the September 2016 Summit on Refugees and Migrants, the situation of internally displaced people was largely excluded from the debate and subsequent outcomes and commitments.
The single reference to internal displacement in the summit’s outcome document, the New York Declaration, points to possible links between internal displacement and large movements of migrants and refugees.
“We know there is a correlation between internal displacement and cross-border movements. To date, however, the nexus between the two phenomena is poorly understood. There is not enough data to determine how many of the refugees and migrants that we are seeing today were internally displaced before crossing a border,” says Alexandra Bilak, Director of NRC’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in Geneva.
“A better understanding of the push and pull factors that leave IDPs with no other choice but to cross borders is necessary for national planning and international support” .
Strengthening legal structures
To ensure protection of internally displaced people, legal and institutional support for their rights must be strengthened.
“The protection of internally displaced people is shamefully weak. Also, there is not a single agency mandated with protection of internally displaced,” states Jan Egeland.
“Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Renewed concrete commitments and action are required by governments and the humanitarian sector alike to ensure that the specific needs of internally displaced people are better addressed,” says Egeland.
Strengthening political will
Another big challenge is the need to strengthen the political will to address internal displacement.
“The primary responsibility to protect and assist internally displaced people lies with the respective national governments,” Egeland points out.
“No matter the cause, internal displacement requires political solutions. Political will is required to find peaceful settlements to conflicts, to reduce disaster risks and the adverse effects of climate change and to ensure people displaced by development projects are not treated as collateral damage,” says Egeland, stressing that concrete steps must also be taken by national governments to integrate the 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement into relevant national and regional law and practice.
Improvement of humanitarian response
The role and responsibility of the humanitarian community will also be addressed at the conference.
“We must all commit to boost national capacities in responding to internal displacement and address gaps,” says Jan Egeland.
Egeland is clear that closing borders and providing support merely to frontline, refugee-hosting countries will not solve the problem:
“Policies to stem refugee and migration flows only serves to shift and hide the challenges of internal displacement,” he says.
NRC’s secretary general sees responding to the needs for protection and assistance of the internally displaced as one of the key challenges of the humanitarian community today.
“We hope the conference will provide a platform to engage in discussions to further operational approach and to contribute to policy change aimed to improve the lives of people living in internal displacement,” he says.
