|| Double-counting: In Myanmar and other
countries in which we compile our national
figures from multiple sources, some IDPs
may have been counted more than once.
We reduce this risk by taking into account
the geographical and temporal scope our
sources’ data.
|| Partners change their data collection methodology, as in Ethiopia, or the scope of
their geographical coverage, as in Nigeria or
Burundi.
|| We change our primary source because of
the lack of available data or doubts about
their credibility, meaning we are working with
two very different data sets from one year
to the next.
|| There is a lack of data on a flow that significantly affects the number of IDPs in a country.
Data on the number of refugees and asylum
seekers from Syria does not indicate whether
they had previously been displaced internally.
Similarly, there are indications of displacements in south-eastern Chad as a result of the
crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR),
but a lack of reliable, updated and verified
data.
|| Delays in data collection after events leading
to displacement toward the end of the year
often make it impossible to disaggregate
flows by year. In several countries, the yearend figures for 2016 only became available
in February or March 2017.
Reflecting the date of sources
When situations remain unchanged from one
year to the next, or when flow data is not available, we base our end-of-year estimates on the
data provided by our partners. In many countries,
however, it has not been updated for several
years. In those with complex or multiple displacement crises, such as Chad, Iraq and Myanmar,
data for one crisis may be regularly reported,
while for others it may be outdated or missing.
If there is no credible evidence that IDPs in such
situations have returned, integrated locally or
settled elsewhere, we have in the past included
them in our global figures.
In the interests of transparency, this year’s report
stratifies the stock of IDPs based on when the
primary data was collected (see figure A.4). The
length of the bar as a whole represents the total
number of IDPs for whom we were able to obtain
data. The right-hand section represents data
which is increasingly out of date.
Accounting for displacement
associated with disasters
Our estimates for displacement associated with
disasters are generated by event rather than by
country. We monitor and collect information for
all reported disasters from partners including
governments, the UN, IFRC and national Red
Cross and Red Crescent societies, NGOs and international media outlets. We apply no threshold
when doing so, either in terms of the number
of people displaced or the distance they have
travelled. Our database includes records of one
up to 15 million IDPs.
We generate a single “new displacement” estimate for the total number of people displaced
by each event. It is important to note that this
figure is not necessarily the same as the peak
number of IDPs, but instead aims to provide the
most comprehensive cumulative figure for those
displaced with minimal double-counting.
Figure A.4: Different strata for conflict related stocks of IDPs, ordered by the date of the source data
Source: IDMC
100
GRID
2017
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