World Refugee Day

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Who is an Internally Displaced Person (IDP)?

An internally displaced person is a person who has had to flee one part of a country to another. The main difference between an IDP and a refugee is that a refugee has crossed an international border. Like refugees, IDPs leave because of problems like war, ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, or famine. Sometimes IDPs go on to ask for refugee status in another country because they could not find safety in their own.

Do internally displaced persons have rights?

Yes - Internally displaced persons are human beings, so they have human rights. Although their government is obliged to protect their human rights, one of the problems that IDPs have is that their government cannot or will not protect them. To make it clear that IDPs have rights, and to remind governments of their obligations to protect IDPs, the UN developed Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Although they are not binding in the same way that a treaty is, they draw on human rights law, humanitarian law (the law of war), and refugee law.

Facts and figures

Current estimates are that there are 175 million migrants in the world, which is roughly 2.8% of the world’s population, currently estimated to be 6.3 billion. There is an estimated 10.6 million refugees in the world, or roughly 0.17% of the world’s population. And numbers of internally displaced persons are currently estimated to be around 25.8 million, 0.4% of the world’s population.

The majority of refugees and IDPs are in Asia and Africa, which between them host a total of 9.2 million refugees and 18.1 million IDPs.

What does Amnesty International do to protect the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers, migrants and IDPs?

AI does research and advocacy for the protection and promotion of the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and IDPs. We work towards securing their fundamental rights and to improving and maintaining the quality of protection of people who are entitled to it. We do this by exposing human rights abuses and protection failures, advocating policy and legal changes, and sometimes through taking action on individual cases or issues.

AI has a global network of Refugee Coordinators in more than 50 countries who take action on some individual cases or issues, lobby their own governments for changes in laws and policies and work with other non-government organisations to promote the protection of the rights of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and IDPs.

The staff at the International Secretariat in London and Geneva work towards influencing international policy and standard setting, as well as advocating for the effective implementation of international standards, policies and guidelines in a way that respects the human rights of asylum-seekers, refugees, migrants and IDPs.

Refugee Coordinators, the International Secretariat as well as UN offices in Geneva, New York and an EU office in Bruxelles work towards an overall strengthening of the international protection framework. This includes calling on states to share responsibility for protecting refugees.

Amnesty International does not represent individual asylum-seekers or refugees, but sometimes takes action in individual cases. If Amnesty International does not actively support a particular case it does not necessarily mean that the organisation believes that the person or persons concerned is not deserving of protection as a refugee. Asylum-seekers, lawyers, and decision-makers often use country information and analysis from AI reports during asylum procedures.