This online event is part of our expert forum series that we at IDMC are organising as lead-in to our 2021 Global Report on Internal Displacement, with a thematic focus on climate change and disaster displacement.
The number of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) worldwide has reached an all-time high. As in previous years, disasters triggered the majority of new displacements in 2019, almost 25 million or two-thirds of the total. Climate change affects the frequency and seasonal patterns of the hazard events that force millions to flee each year. Moreover, its negative impacts can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. However, rather than accept mass displacement in the face of climate change as an inevitable scenario for the future several countries and communities have successfully integrated displacement risk into climate change adaptation and disaster management strategies. Their experience of years of planning and implementing displacement policies and programmes offers valuable lessons.
This session will identify and review forward-looking strategies, focusing on community-based resilience building and locally led adaptation, and feature examples of best practices from Bangladesh as well as West and Central Africa.
Moderator:
Bina Desai, IDMC
Speakers:
Alexander Dörzenbach, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Hind Aissaoui Bennani, International Organization for Migration (IOM)
12.01.2021, Geneva - New estimates reveal the economic impact of internal displacement caused by conflict, violence or disasters around the world.
With nearly 51 million people living in internal displacement, and an average cost per person of $390, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimates that the total global economic impact of internal displacement has reached $20 billion for each year of displacement.
This estimate has increased from $13 billion, or $310 per person, in the two-year period since IDMC’s last assessment. It is based on an original methodology which measures the loss of income when people are forced to flee their homes and the cost of meeting their basic needs in security, housing, health and education.
“With more people internally displaced around the world than ever before, responding to their needs places an immense financial burden on overstretched humanitarian budgets and fragile national economies that are already suffering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Alexandra Bilak, Director of IDMC.
“Investing in preventing and reducing internal displacement and its impacts is, therefore, not only beneficial for security and wellbeing but also helps the economy at large.”
IDMC analysed 22 countries affected by significant internal displacement associated with conflict and violence, disasters, or a combination of both. The average cost and loss per internally displaced person (IDP) ranged from $114 per year in Colombia to $869 per year in Syria.
Syria had the highest annual economic impact at $5.6 billion, or 14% of the country’s GDP. After ten years of civil war, 6.5 million people have been uprooted. In Somalia, persistent insecurity has displaced 2.6 million people. The cost of meeting their needs, just over $1 billion, represents over 20% of GDP.
The economic impact of internal displacement in the DRC, Yemen and Iraq were also among the highest of the countries analysed, totalling $1.8 billion, $1.3 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively. This shows that large-scale, protracted crises can have a huge impact on the entire national economy.
The greatest financial burden associated with internal displacement across the 22 countries analysed stemmed from loss of livelihoods and health costs, which together accounted for two-thirds of the total economic impact.
“Most of the countries included in our analysis have been repeatedly affected by displacement crises and continue to be at risk of protracted or cyclical displacement. This highlights an urgent need to refocus our response from short-term humanitarian reaction to longer-term prevention and national development planning,” adds Alexandra Bilak.
These estimates are conservative and limited by the data available. They do not account for the economic impacts associated with longer-term consequences of internal displacement, or the financial impacts on host communities or communities of origin. They do, however, offer insight on the areas of greatest need for IDPs, so that governments and aid providers can tailor their interventions accordingly.
NOTES TO EDITORS
IDMC first published estimates on the annual economic cost of internal displacement at the global level in February 2019. Based on data from 2017 from eight countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe which had recently suffered significant displacement crises, IDMC estimated the global cost to be $13 billion, or $310 per IDP.
This report applies the same methodology to assess the economic impact of internal displacement in 2019 for 22 countries. The selection was determined by countries which have OCHA Humanitarian Response Plans, the main source of data used for this analysis.
Included in this study are the ten countries that reported the highest number of people living in internal displacement as a result of conflict and violence in 2019 – Syria, Colombia, the DRC, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, Iraq and Ethiopia – and six out of ten countries that recorded the highest number as a result of disasters in 2019 – Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, the DRC and Nigeria.
The increase in global financial impact from 2017 to 2019 can be explained by a rise in the number of people living in internal displacement, which hit a record high at the end of 2019. For the first time, IDMC was also able to include an estimate for the number of people displaced by disasters.
The cost per IDP has also increased due to worsening, therefore more costly, displacement crises in places like Yemen and the inclusion of country’s with relatively high incomes, such as Syria and Colombia, where the costs and losses are higher.
This report provides country-level estimates on the economic impact of displacement in 22 countries. To do this it uses IDMC’s original methodology.
Internal displacement can have a destabilising effect on the lives of those forced to flee their homes, often with significant financial repercussions. It can limit the ability of internally displaced people (IDPs) to contribute to the economy and generate specific needs that must be paid for by the IDPs themselves, host communities, government agencies and the humanitarian sector. With nearly 51 million people living in internal displacement, and an average cost per person of $390, IDMC estimates that the total global economic impact of internal displacement reached $20 billion in 2019. This estimate has increased from $13 billion, or $310 per person, in the two-year period since IDMC’s last assessment. The estimate is based on an original methodology which measures the loss of income when people are forced to flee their homes and the cost of meeting their basic needs in security, housing, health and education.
As I write this last director’s letter of 2020, a turbulent year is coming to an end. Here at IDMC, in Geneva and around the world, Covid-19 has changed the way we work, disrupted our daily lives and confronted us with challenges unimaginable only a year ago.
Some things, however, have continued unabated. Civil wars, political and ethnic violence and record-breaking storms have uprooted millions of people around the globe.
The urgency of our work was highlighted right at the beginning of the year as the Syrian military renewed its offensive on Idlib governorate, triggering around 959,000 new displacements. It was the largest single displacement event since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.
In the Sahel region of Africa, the expansion of Islamist armed groups led to mass displacement, particularly around the porous borders between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. A million people were displaced in Burkina Faso in 2020, making it the fastest growing displacement crisis of the year.
The pandemic, conflict and disasters also combined to generate more internal displacement in Yemen. Conflict between the government and Ansar Allah had already uprooted tens of thousands of people when heavy rains between March and August forced more people to flee, while the virus served to significantly heighten IDPs’ existing vulnerabilities.
And finally, extreme weather events continued to trigger mass displacement across the world, from Nicaragua to Viet Nam. This year’s Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record, while Cyclone Amphan led to 3.3 million pre-emptive evacuations across India and Bangladesh in May, and super typhoon Goni close to 2 million in the Philippines in November.
Documenting the scale and scope of this human suffering can be challenging, even at the best of times. This year, our work was complicated by the cumulative impact of successive rounds of confinement, coupled with the constant threat of exposure and illness. This has left us all exhausted, and looking forward to a break.
We are proud to see that, against all odds, we also made great advances in 2020.
We began the year on a positive note when the UN secretary general, António Guterres, launched the high-level panel on internal displacement. As a member of the expert advisory group, I have been honoured to contribute to the panel’s work, serving not only its members but also the world’s tens of millions of IDPs.
We published our Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) 2020 at the height of the pandemic’s first wave in Europe. For the first time, we presented our flagship report virtually, an approach we would repeat for many other publications during the year. GRID 2020’s focus on promoting solutions and mobilising national political will could not have been more timely, given that the importance of local response was one of the first lessons Covid-19 taught us as international travel became impossible.
Conscious that a disproportionate number of women and girls are living in internal displacement, this year we published our first estimates of how many are doing so as a result of conflict and violence. Our research showed that displacement takes a high toll on women’s livelihoods, security, access to health services and education. Studies in Colombia and Afghanistan point to an increase of domestic violence during displacement. The Covid-19 pandemic has only served to aggravate this trend, as our mid-year update revealed.
As the pandemic rendered our annual conference in October impossible, we launched instead three expert forums to improve understanding of climate change and displacement. These will continue the conversation well into next year, focusing on monitoring disaster displacement, displacement risk modelling and investing in solutions. Their results will feed into our 2021 GRID and help shape the policy discourse, research agenda and programme priorities on this important topic.
We also published this year our new 10-year strategy, From Evidence to Impact. This new vision will help align our own goals with those of Agenda 2030 by continuing to generate evidence on internal displacement, galvanising action and strengthening capacity at the country level.
In view of the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war, we will also publish our first Middle East and North Africa report in February 2021, which shows how significantly this region has been affected by internal displacement over the past 10 years.
All in all, we have learned this year to be creative and flexible, to rely more on local expertise, travel less and appreciate the delicate balance of the natural environment. At IDMC we will keep these lessons in mind as we go into the new year, one which we see as full of opportunities. We will start to implement our new strategy, draw attention to successful practices in addressing displacement with a new global repository and continue to reach broader audiences by hosting engaging and interactive virtual events.
We send our warm thanks to all of you who have supported our work in the last year and hope you will remain by our side as we move into this next chapter.
On behalf of the IDMC team, I wish you a happy and restful holiday, and all the very best for 2021.
Between 2016 and 2019, IDMC's Pablo Cortés Ferrández spent time in Colombia meeting some of the people affected by rural-to-urban displacement. This multimedia story is rich in the original art, recordings, and photos collected along the way.
This study examines urban internal displacement in Colombia and analyses the humanitarian response to the needs of internally displaced people (IDPs) and their host communities in informal settlements. Research was undertaken in Altos de la Florida, an informal settlement in Soacha on the outskirts of Bogotá, between 2016 and 2019.
Context
Colombia has the second-highest number of internally displaced people in the world, with 5.6 million. Nearly 90 per cent of the country’s IDPs have been displaced from rural to urban areas by conflict and violence, and informal urban settlements have become a refuge of last resort for many.
Internal displacement has played a significant role in the country’s rapid urbanisation. Around a quarter of the built areas of Colombian cities are informal settlements, as such urban areas have been at the forefront of the response to internal displacement.
