Figure 3.1: Coverage of IDMC’s reporting (not to scale) Internal displacement Reported information on internal displacement Information on internal displacement obtained by IDMC Internal displacement reported on by IDMC We were unable to obtain verifiable quantitative estimates of new displacement or the total stock of IDPs for some countries, despite significant contextual evidence that internal displacement had occurred. This was the case for people displaced by gangs and criminal violence in Brazil and South Africa. For other countries, we lack the disaggregated data needed to comprehensively account for all incidents of displacement. The Chinese government, for example, publishes its own annual estimates of the number of people evacuated and otherwise displaced by disasters. Their figures have been higher than our own estimates each year, because their aggregate includes disasters about which we have not been able to obtain information. We have been closing this gap every year with increased attention and effort. Often our geographical coverage is limited for reasons beyond our and our partners’ control. Gaps in geographical coverage can occur because insecurity impedes access to IDPs, a challenge our sources face in numerous countries. Sometimes limited resources are to blame. In one country, our source reduced the geographical scope of its data collection in December from 11 to eight provinces for want of funding. In other countries politics play a key role, such as when the government only authorises data collection in certain locations, which are not necessarily where the majority of IDPs are sheltering. Not all causes of internal displacement are included in the global baseline The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement recognise that people may become displaced for a number of reasons including, but not limited to “armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters.”270 Current monitoring and data collection do not systematically cover all of these causes of displacement, let alone the other ways people become internally displaced. The global figures in this report include only people displaced by conflict and disasters caused by sudden-onset natural hazards. We are working toward global figures for internal displacement caused by development and droughts, but these people remain largely unaccounted for. We removed figures for Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe from our dataset on displacement associated with conflict in 2016, because their primary cause of displacement was forced eviction. This is not to say that the evictions occurred without violence or the threat of it, but because the displacement occurred outside an internationally recognised armed conflict or generalised violence, we stopped counting those affected as IDPs. The scale of this blind spot is significant. In Zimbabwe alone around 266,000 people are currently internally displaced as a result of forced evictions.271 They live in nearemergency conditions, at risk of food insecurity and without basic sanitation.272 We have detailed five ways that people became displaced as a result of the 2013 to 2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and the measures put in place to contain the spread of the disease. 273 Given the difficulty of monitoring these phenomena, however, these IDPs are not included in our global baseline. Incomplete data on the start, dynamics and duration of displacement From a policy perspective, there are at least two reasons it is essential to have information about specific incidents of new displacement, particularly when it comes to the goal of reducing internal displacement by 50 per cent by 2030. We 72 GRID 2017