Disasters Total numbers and future risk Towards a global headcount of disaster displaced people A global figure accounting for the total headcount, or global stock, of people living in displacement would significantly improve our understanding of the global scope and nature of the phenomenon. National and international policymakers also need to know how IDPs’ situations and needs evolve over time. They need to understand how many people end up living in prolonged or protracted displacement, the obstacles they face in trying to achieve durable solutions and how these might be addressed to ensure no one is left behind. IDMC’s research in 2015 identified a sample of 34 cases that had been ongoing for between one to 26 years, accounting for more than 715,000 people.143 This year, we attempted to estimate a total headcount, or global stock figure, for people living in displacement following disasters that included those still displaced by events in previous years. Coming up with a robust global estimate has proved impossible for the time being, however, because of the limited data available that tracks displacement situations over time (see part 3). Examples from a wide range of countries suggest that better monitoring and data collection on displacement over time would make generating a headcount possible, if still difficult. They also show that the evolution of displacement depends greatly on the context in which it occurs. In some cases, high numbers of people evacuated around the time of the onset of a disaster are able to return to their homes soon afterwards, while in others millions lose their homes and remain displaced years after the event. Two years after Nepal’s major earthquake disaster that led to the loss of over 8,850 lives and the displacement of some 2.8 million people, around 2.6 million are still thought to be displaced and living in temporary shelters.144 The recovery and reconstruction process has been severely delayed while the government is absorbed with the country’s ongoing political crisis. 42 GRID 2017 In the Philippines, typhoon Nock-Ten made first landfall in the Bicol region of Luzon on 25 December, before tracking across various provinces and out over the South China Sea the following day. The category four storm triggered the mass evacuation of as many as 2.6 million people, the largest disaster displacement event of 2016. Government data six days later captured just 230,000 displaced people staying either in or outside evacuation centres, a figure that had dropped to only 368 by the end of January 2017.145 Given, however, that Nock-Ten is estimated to have damaged or destroyed at least 70,000 homes, it is unclear how many people may still be displaced and staying temporarily elsewhere while recovery and reconstruction efforts continue.146 These cases highlight some of the displacement patterns and impacts following disasters, and the challenges in arriving at robust estimates of the number of people displaced without adequate information over time. They also illustrate that initially high numbers tend to relate to necessary and life-saving evacuations, which may include a large number of people who are able to return to their homes soon after the event. However, they also show that such evacuations may be just the beginning of a longer period of displacement for significant numbers of people for whom return is either not a safe option if possible at all. Moreover, the range of economic, social, cultural and psycho-social impacts that the experience of displacement can have over prolonged periods of time, on both those displaced as well as host communities, highlights the difficulty in determining when displacement ends. This difficulty is as much conceptual as it is practical in terms of monitoring and planning for support. The situation of tens of thousands of people still displaced in Japan following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster in 2011 is a further case in point (see spotlight, p.43).