As of 2023, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 75 million—over twice the number of refugees in the world. IDPs are often driven to move because of the impacts of climate change, conflict and other disruptions and hardships. Although IDPs may not be in the news as frequently as refugees seeking safe harbor in countries other than their own, the problems experienced by IDPs and the humanitarian and economic impacts on the countries within which they are displaced are vast. And, like refugees, IDPs are displaced for years; in fact, protracted displacement has become the norm.
PROGRESS (Periodic Global Report on the State of Solutions to Internal Displacement) is an initiative designed to help create people-centered, data-driven solutions for internal displacement. The report is the product of a collaboration between Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) and the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Global Data Institute.
SFS Professor Elizabeth Ferris is one of the principal researchers on this project. She also is the director of ISIM and leads the new Master of Arts in International Migration and Refugees program. In time for the 2024 report’s unveiling in Geneva, Switzerland, Ferris answered questions about the partnership, significant findings from the report and how Georgetown students can engage with this kind of research.
Q. What is PROGRESS? How did the partnership between IOM and Georgetown on PROGRESS come together?
A. I’ve done a lot of work on internal displacement over the years. I spent nine years working at the Brookings Institution with IDPs and have participated in various expert groups advising the UN on what to do with respect to IDPs. Most recently, I was one of the four experts supporting the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement (2019-2021). The main conclusion from that panel is that we need to do much more to find solutions for internal displacement.
The UN Secretary General named a special advisor to work on solutions to internal displacement, and all of the UN agencies have intensified their efforts to find solutions. The International Organization for Migration (the UN Migration agency) has long collected data on IDPs through household-level surveys for hundreds of thousands of IDPs. Working with IOM, we wondered ‘Could we use that data to measure solutions for internal displacement? Or, can we measure progress toward durable solutions?’ The result was this initiative called PROGRESS—Periodic Global Reports on the State of Solutions for IDPs—which will be a series of annual reports. ISIM and IOM issued the first report last year on the state of solutions for internal displacement and we’ll launch the second, more comprehensive report, in Geneva in December 2024.
This is really a unique partnership between a major UN agency and Georgetown. ISIM has a very small staff—we have four faculty, two of us working on this project—and IOM has thousands of employees worldwide, including thousands of people gathering data for PROGRESS. The partnership with IOM has been mutually beneficial—using IOM’s obvious strengths and data and ISIM’s academic expertise to analyze the data, contextualize it and communicate it to a broader audience.
Q. What are some of the most significant findings of the report? Were there any surprising insights about the conditions or challenges faced by internally displaced persons?
A. We began with five hypotheses. The first one was: the longer people are displaced, the less likely they will be to return. And we found that this was the case. Most governments think of solutions where the IDPs will go back home. Full stop, only returns. Yet, the reality is that most people who’ve been displaced, especially when they’ve been displaced for more than five years, aren’t going to go back home.
Secondly, we found that there were big differences between those displaced by disasters and those displaced by conflict. Right now, about 25 million people are displaced by disasters every year, and the assumption has always been that it’s short term. Certainly, a lot of people do go home after the floodwaters recede, the landslide is over, the earth quits shaking. But there are a lot of people who don’t go back, and what we found was that 90% of those displaced by disasters don’t want to go home, but rather to remain where they are. Around 60% of those displaced by conflicts also indicate that they intend to stay where they are rather than return.
We also found that health matters. For example, female-headed households that have a vulnerable member in their families (chronic illness, disability) are less likely to intend to return. We think that this is because they think that they can get better care where they are than if they go back home.
We were surprised that overall, with a few exceptions, there weren’t many gender differences when it came to intentions to return between female- and male-headed households. Both indicate a preference to remain where they are at about equal rates. Typically, women are more concerned with security and stability for the kids and we thought that perhaps they would be less willing to return if it was perceived as risky. But we didn’t find major differences overall and will be looking further into this relationship..
We were also surprised and encouraged that most IDPs—in fact, 95% of those surveyed –felt safe where they are, which is really important because a lot of the agencies worry about the safety of people who have been displaced. There are all kinds of security threats that people face, from the violence back home to conflicts in the community. So the fact that most IDPs feel safe where they are, is, I think, a tribute to the hard work that governments and humanitarian organizations have done.
In addition to all the quantitative analysis, we also organized focus group discussions in five countries with IDPs. You can only learn so much from statistics and data. But when you actually talk to people, some of their insights were very interesting. ‘What are your biggest problems?’ or ‘what’s keeping you from finding a solution?’ Both the focus groups and the quantitative analysis showed that displacement, unfortunately, is not a one-time thing. There are multiple displacements. People are displaced once, and then they’re displaced again, and they’re displaced again. Over 40% of all of our 125,000 respondents have been displaced more than once. But in some countries, respondents reported that they had been forced to move six or more times.
Q. How do you envision the findings from this report being applied in real-world settings by NGOs, governments or other agencies?
A. First of all, I think that some of our findings on the fact that IDPs plan to stay where they are have major implications for governments and UN and civil society organizations working with IDPs. If you start with the assumption that these displaced people are going to stay where they are, then you make different decisions. You make sure there are enough schools, for example, and there’s enough trash collection. You begin to plan for them to stay. I think this also applies in the United States, where you see people displaced this year by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, and the assumption is that they all go home. But our research indicates that a lot of them won’t.
Another thing we found is gaps in research. We know a lot now about IDPs themselves; we don’t know nearly as much about the communities that are receiving them. Are communities with more resources more welcoming for IDPs? Do they support IDPs remaining? Is there less discrimination against them? I think in the next phase of the research we’re really going to look at socioeconomic characteristics of the communities. Do both groups speak the same language? Are there clan relations? Sometimes there are; sometimes there aren’t.
Q. How does this research connect with the themes covered in the new MIMR program, and what unique perspectives does it bring to academic discussions about displacement?
A. Our new master’s focuses on all kinds of human mobility: skilled labor migration, internal displacement, people displaced by disasters—and this research is certainly relevant to what we’re learning and working on with respect to IDPs in this project. We’re trying to give our students really strong research skills. We see ourselves as training the next generation of humanitarian and migration leaders and policymakers. Having this kind of evidence, I think, is very useful for them to see the way in which data can be used to support policy.
Particularly in this anti-immigrant climate, we need expertise more than ever, people who really understand the issues and the nuances and can resist some of the misinformation that’s being circulated.
Q. For students interested in displacement research, what skills or experience would be most valuable for them to gain?
A. First, our master’s program offers a required research methods course where students learn a variety of research techniques from interviews of government officials, to ethnographies, to surveys to big data research to using data such as X feeds, in order to measure trends with respect to migration and displacement. Students acquire those skills, and then they’ll use them in both their course work and on-the ground experiences. We have a summer practicum where students will go off and work in the field, and judging from the agencies that have requested assistance, a lot of them are requesting research assistance. Our students can contribute to data analysis or carry out systematic interviews or participate in focus group discussions with refugees or migrants or host communities. So I think they’ll be able to put these skills to use while they’re at Georgetown and beyond.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.