Donor pressure led the government to initiate an IDP return programme. Organisers assumed that IDPs would go home and pick up livelihoods as if nothing untoward had happened. The UN Development Programme thought it could implement its mandate to provide…
How can data collection mechanisms be standardised and improved in order to obtain information on IDPs and better meet their needs with appropriate levels of assistance? In 2001 UNICEF’s Division of Policy and Planning launched a pilot project to assess…
The causes of displacement in Angola are multi-complex. War may have been the most prominent cause of flight in recent decades, but IDPs also cite environmental degradation and lack of access to schools, health posts, transport facilities and markets as…
Israel has destroyed, demolished and confiscated housing and land and denied IDPs the right to return to their homes. As Israel becomes more politically unstable, a significant percentage of the country’s Arab minority are threatened with state-sponsored or -tolerated forced…
How can we contribute to discussions about the formation of categories and definitions by deconstructing, questioning and changing their meanings and contents? My work in Sri Lanka looks at the common understandings of the IDP category and how it affects…
Since the General Assembly approved UNHCR’s establishment, it has on several occasions passed resolutions extending UNHCR’s mandate to facilitate assistance for people displaced within the region of their own domicile. When the then UN Secretary-General invited UNHCR in 1991 to…
Can Kurdish IDPs return from the cities to which they fled? What strategies are needed to help displaced Kurds resume disrupted livelihoods? How can Kurdish women be empowered to play a major role in reconstruction? Internal displacement in Turkey took…
During flight their health is endangered by extremes of temperature, lack of shelter, food and clean water and physical and psychological stress. The WHO principles of primary health care can be used for medical evaluation and for designing relevant health…
Methods used included advocacy work at central government level in Colombo, training workshops, leaflet / poster dissemination, formation of district monitoring working groups, consultations, listening to IDP focus groups and participatory evaluation assessments. When the project began there were 492…
What methodological problems inhibit psychological research on trauma in Africa and the relevance of the meaning that the continent’s 12 million IDPs individually and collectively attribute to their experience? The experience of internal displacement is an extraordinary life experience, often…