North-eastern Nigeria has borne the brunt of so-called Boko Haram’s jihadist insurgency since 2009. More than 1.9 million people were internally displaced as a result of the group’s violence as of January 2019, and over 230,000 refugees have sought shelter in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

This report, which is based on interviews with 345 internally displaced people (IDPs) and returning refugees, examines the drivers of displacement and onward movement within and across Nigeria’s borders, provides a better understanding of people’s priorities and preconditions for return, and explores obstacles and opportunities for durable solutions.

The report is part of IDMC’s “Invisible Majority” thematic series, which examines the relationship between internal displacement and cross-border movements. 

The link between internal displacement and socioeconomic development has been discussed in a number of publications but never studied systematically. This paper, as part of IDMC's thematic series "The ripple effect",  presents the key findings of a statistical analysis highlighting correlations between the number of new internal displacements recorded by IDMC in conflict or disaster settings and approximately 1,500 socioeconomic indicators published by the World Bank. 

Although it does not identify which indicators represent drivers or impacts of internal displacement, or relate to other potentially less visible variables, this analysis demonstrates the need to consider not only the economic, but also the social and environmental dimensions of development and highlights areas of interest for future research.

Understanding how socioeconomic development relates to internal displacement, as a driver or as an impact, can help governments assess displacement risk, improve crises prevention and response plans, track progress in reducing the severity of displacement situations, evaluate the effectiveness of policy decisions and support national accountability.

Internal displacement affects the lives of displaced people, their host communities and those they leave behind in many ways. We identified seven dimensions that need to be considered - health, livelihoods, education, housing and infrastructure, security, the environment and social life. This report presents the results of a systematic review of nearly 1,000 publications on the impacts of internal displacement in each of these dimensions.

Our analysis highlighted recurring effects that must be assessed more systematically, but also knowledge gaps where more research is needed. It confirmed the variety and intensity of internal displacement’s repercussions and showed how they all relate to each other.

As part of IDMC’s research programme on the economic impacts of internal displacement, we will build upon this work to develop new tools to assess these impacts’ consequences on the economy at the individual, community and national levels.

Download the executive summary (PDF, 0.5MB) in English, French and Spanish.

Beyond the losses caused by a disaster’s destructive force, less direct consequences can also impact the economy. One is the inability of people displaced by the disaster to continue their habitual work. By disconnecting people from their productive activity for days, weeks, months or even years, internal displacement reduces economic production. In the case of the 2017 earthquake in Mexico, internal displacement led to an estimated reduction in economic production of $160 million, or 0.01 per cent of Mexico’s GDP.

This paper is part of IDMC's thematic series "The ripple effect: economic impacts of internal displacement". The series aims to measure the effects of internal displacement on the economic potential of internally displaced people, host communities and societies as a whole, bridging the knowledge gap through innovative research, partnerships with experts and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines and consultations with policy stakeholders concerned with economic development.