Internal displacement data An incomplete picture Despite our best efforts, the GRID does not yet paint a comprehensive picture of internal displacement worldwide (see figure 3.1). This means that our global baseline is still a significant underestimate. Key gaps include the lack of data on all relevant phenomena, our limited ability both to obtain and analyse all of the information that does exist and to systematically identify new incidents of displacement. Without this information, we do not have an accurate measure of how many people have become internally displaced, the reasons they have fled and how long they remain displaced for. Limits in geographical coverage We added Algeria, Burkina Faso and Mozambique to our dataset on displacement associated with conflict in 2016, bringing the total number of countries and territories monitored to 56. Our monitoring of displacement associated with disasters covered 118 countries and territories in 2016 and 176 since 2008. Accounting terms and concepts The language we use to describe how we account for internal displacement can seem abstract and far removed from people at the heart of this report. Behind all of our figures are people whose lives have been threatened and disrupted, in many cases severely, by traumatic events. Most displaced people flee their homes and places of residence as a last resort and only in response to life-threatening situations. Most displacement figures and statistics refer to “stocks” or “flows”. Concept Characteristics Commonly used terms Stock The number of people, in this case IDPs, refugees, migrants, returnees IDPs, in a given situation and/or location at a particular moment in time Flows Processes, such as the rate at which New displacements, returns, resetpeople are newly displaced or return tlements over a given period of time As a report to UNSC noted: “The production of statistics on [displaced people] requires a clear distinction between stocks and flows.”269 Doing so remains a challenge though, even among national statistics offices and those collecting displacement data. The term “returnees”, for example, can refer to IDPs who are no longer displaced, having returned to their homes or places of origin. It is also used, however, to describe refugees who have returned to their country of origin but who may still be displaced and accounted for as such (see below for more detail). INSIDE THE GRID: Overcoming data shortfalls 71