• There were 27.8 million new displacements in 127 countries during 2015, more than the total populations of New York City, London, Paris and Cairo combined.

New displacement: conflict

• There were 8.6 million new displacements associated with conflict and violence in 28 countries in 2015.
• This type of displacement is on the rise, with an average of 5.2 million incidents a year since 2003. This equates to 14,000 people forced to flee every day.
• Displacement in the Middle East and north Africa has snowballed since the Arab spring uprisings in 2010 and the rise of the Islamic State (also known as ISIL or ISIS). There were nearly 4.8 million new displacements in 2015, significantly more than in all other regions of the world combined. Yemen, Syria and Iraq accounted for over half of the global total.
• Outside the Middle East, the countries with the highest numbers of people fleeing were Ukraine, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Afghanistan, Colombia, Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan

New displacement: disasters

• There were 19.2 million new displacements associated with disasters in 113 countries, more than twice as many as for conflict and violence. Over the past eight years, 203.4 million displacements have been recorded, an average of 25.4 million each year.
• South and east Asian regions, countries and events again dominated in terms of the highest absolute figures, but no region of the world was unaffected. India, China and Nepal accounted for the highest numbers, with 3.7 million, 3.6 million and 2.6 million respectively.
• Most displacement associated with disasters in 2015 took place in developing countries.
• Weather-related hazards triggered 14.7 million displacements in 2015. Despite the onset of an El Niño episode, this was lower than the annual average of 21.5 million since 2008.
• 4.5 million displacements were brought on by large-scale geophysical hazards. This was higher than the annual average, driven up by the Nepal earthquake disaster.

Total headcount

• There were 40.8 million people internally displaced worldwide as a result of conflict and violence as of the end of 2015. This represents an increase of 2.8 million from our 2014 estimate and the highest figure ever recorded. It is twice the number of refugees in the world.
• As of December 2015, three-quarters of the world’s internally displaced people (IDPs), or 30 million people, were located in ten countries. Five of them – Colombia, DRC, Iraq, Sudan and South Sudan – have featured in the list of the ten largest displaced populations every year since 2003.
• Of the other five countries, displacement in Nigeria, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen is largely the result of conflicts that erupted or escalated within the last five years. There is a risk these conflicts will become intractable, leaving the people they have displaced, who make up more than 30 per cent of the overall global estimate, to face a future of protracted and possibly multiple displacement.
• At nearly 12 million, the number of people displaced by conflict in sub-Saharan Africa has flat-lined over the last decade, underlining the chronic nature of displacement in the region.
• There are no figures for the total number of people displaced by disasters as of the end of 2015. However, among a sample of 34 ongoing cases documented in 2015, there were hundreds of thousands of people identified as living in protracted displacement for periods ranging between one and 26 years.

• Our ability to obtain data on the number of IDPs and the processes responsible for increases or decreases in the size of the IDP population is limited.
• The Guiding Principles and several UN General Assembly Resolutions have recognised that sovereign states bear the primary responsibility for collecting and sharing data on internal displacement. This should, of course, include regular updates on the number of people who have become newly displaced or achieved durable solutions, as well as data disaggregated by sex and age. At present, displacement data in several countries is already outdated, and it is at risk of becoming outdated in others, including countries with large IDP populations such as Afghanistan. In order to avoid this, more resources and capacities are needed at country level to collect displacement data and keep it up to date.
• We have difficulty in obtaining data on the processes that lead to the end of displacement and the number of IDPs who have fled across international borders. There is also little information available about the number of children born to IDPs and the number of people who die in displacement.
• Our estimates for the number of people internally displaced by conflict and violence are deliberately conservative. When we receive information that IDPs have returned, integrated locally or settled elsewhere, we subtract them from our totals regardless of whether they are known to have achieved a durable solution. We do this because reporting on the end of displacement and the processes that lead to it are open to different interpretations.
• To generate global estimates, we have historically attempted to account for new displacements associated with disasters without indicating the length of people’s displacement. This means our figures are the sum of all displacements triggered by a particular disaster or event, and do not account for any outflows such as returns or onward movements.
• We were able to obtain updated information in 2015 for nearly 31.7 million of the 40.8 million people who we estimated were living in displacement as of the end of the year as a result of conflict and violence.
• The age of the most recent data for the remaining 9.1 million IDPs varies widely and in some cases is significantly out of date. The data on nearly a million IDPs in Turkey dates back at least to 2006, and some for Guatemala goes back as far as 1997.
• The issue of outdated or decaying data is of particular concern with Colombia, a country that has been among the five countries with highest number of people displaced by conflict every year since we began monitoring internal displacement in 1998.
• Outdated or decaying data is a problem in 12 of the 53 conflict- or violence-affected countries in this report, accounting for approximately 20 per cent of IDPs worldwide. The countries concerned are Armenia, Bangladesh, Congo, Cyprus, Guatemala, Macedonia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Togo, Turkey and Uganda.
• The lack of updated data, particularly on displacement that has become protracted, is one of the main gaps we face in both conflict and disaster contexts. We have also found that people displaced by intractable conflicts around the world tend to fall off the radar. We have been unable to obtain return figures for a number of countries, including Bangladesh, Burundi, Guatemala and Turkey.
• As a global monitor we want to call attention to such situations, and their inclusion also constitutes an explicit plea for updated data and information.

• Global displacement figures do not capture many other contexts in which people are forced to flee their homes. More comprehensive monitoring of displacement is needed to ensure that all IDPs, and people vulnerable to displacement, are included in efforts to respond to their needs and address longer-term development objectives.

Displaced by criminal violence

• Criminal violence associated with drug trafficking and gang activity had displaced at least a million people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico as of December 2015.
• Studies have established a direct link between criminal violence and migration, but such displacement in the region tends to remain unquantified and unaddressed for reasons ranging from political to methodological.
• Conceptual and information gaps result in a lack of protection that means people fleeing criminal violence fall through the cracks, leaving them with little choice other than to embark on dangerous migrations, risking trafficking and murder, to neighbouring countries or the US.

Displaced by drought-related disasters

• Drought is not a direct "cause" of displacement in and of itself, but has impacts on food and livelihood insecurity, including increasing potential for conflict over scarce resources.
• Displacement might be identified as a tipping point where abnormal movement patterns indicate the breakdown of normal coping strategies under severely stressed conditions.
• Recognising people as internally displaced as opposed to voluntary migrants helps to identify them as people in need of particular attention from governments, humanitarians and development organisations, and who should be prioritised for protection and assistance.

Displaced by development projects

• Rather than being priority beneficiaries, people displaced by development projects usually end up worse off, undermining development gains. They suffer a range of human rights violations, and solutions are as elusive as for displacement associated with conflict and disasters.
• The most frequently cited global estimate for people displaced by development projects is 15 million people a year since the mid-2000s.
• Accumulated figures for people displaced by development projects appear only to be available for China, where the total is 80 million between 1950 and 2015, and in India, where the total is 65 million between 1947 and 2010.
• Indigenous people and the urban poor are particularly affected by displacement associated with development projects because they tend to live on land that is valuable in terms of natural resources or as real estate.
• The planning that goes into development projects provides an opportunity to mitigate displacement and prepare for durable solutions from the outset. If projects are undertaken with political commitment, adequate skills, sufficient financial and institutional resources, a participatory approach and respect for human rights, the displacement they cause can result in beneficial and sustainable development.