International Recommendations on Internally Displaced Persons Statistics

The aim of this report is to provide recommendations on the production and dissemination of statistics on internal displacement. This will help to strengthen evidence-based public policy and national responses to displacement in the long term by: a) increasing the visibility of internal displacement by providing stronger evidence about it; b) improving the quality, comparability, accessibility and coherence of statistics on IDPs; c) better informing efforts by national authorities to ensure the protection of and provision of assistance to IDPs and to enable the achievement of durable solutions; d) supporting analyses of the impact of internal displacement and progress towards durable solutions for affected populations; e) systematising analyses of vulnerability data relating to displacement and better targeting of populations in need of humanitarian and development interventions in response; f) supporting the inclusion of internal displacement in local and national development plans and reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This report is primarily concerned with producing official statistics about IDPs, but some elements are also applicable to operational data on IDPs produced in the course of a humanitarian response. Operational data usually do not meet the requirements of official statistics but, in view of the lack of official statistics produced on IDPs, operational data might inform the production of new official statistics or might facilitate the transition to official statistics. These recommendations should also help to improve the quality and coherence of operational data, to both improve their accessibility to users and facilitate their replacement by official statistics produced by national authorities or their transition to official statistics.