A tale of three cities: Internal displacement, urbanization and humanitarian action in Abidjan, Khartoum and Mogadishu

There has been growing attention to the issue of internally displaced persons (IDPs)
from the 1980s onwards. Most of the attention has, however, focused on displacement
in rural areas with the particular interest in camp situations. Given this narrow
approach, IDP movements to urban areas remained largely neglected until recently.
There are, for instance, numerous new publications on this issue, including the
comprehensive background paper accomplished by UNHCR. Besides this, several
new profiling exercises have been conducted on various urban contexts
and novel methodologies for profiling are being developed. Also, inter-agency cooperation on urban displacement and the number of international conferences dealing with urban
displacement have grown.