Flickr/ Fox News Insider. Some rights reserved.News, day after day, of countless refugees coursing through Europe in search of succour and shelter, and of the millions more on Europe’s doorstep in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon needs no elaboration. Syria alone is reportedly responsible for up to 4 million refugees, with Iraq and Somalia accounting for a further 3 million. Hundreds of thousands more are coming from Afghanistan, Libya, Eritrea, Nigeria, and so on. Alarming numbers, but no longer surprising because the media have rendered them familiar.
What is less documented and less widely-known - ignored perhaps because the repercussions have largely failed to reach the First World— is that the number of people who have lost or fled their homes is much larger. UNHCR (the United Nations High Commission for Refugees) estimates the current number of displaced people at a staggering 59.5 million, of whom ‘only’ 19.3 million are classified as refugees or asylum-seekers.[i] In official parlance, displaced people who are not refugees are known as IDPs (Internally Displaced People).
Refugees and IDPs
