Shining a Light on Internal Displacement A Vision for the Future

We began our work as the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement at an inaugural meeting in February 2020 in Geneva, Switzerland. We did not know it at the time, but the world was about to change. Just days later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. To keep ourselves safe and protect our families, many of us were able to stay at home and limit our movements. For tens of millions of other people though, the risks posed by the virus were outweighed by the threats of war, violence and disasters, or a tragic combination of factors. For them, staying at home was not an option. Flight was the only way to find safety.

As we submit our report to Secretary-General António Guterres, the internal displacement crisis continues and even deepens. The title of the report – ‘Shining a Light on Internal Displacement: A Vision for the Future’ – reflects the two main preoccupations that drove our work. First, internal displacement has largely dropped off the international agenda over the past decade. Despite commitments to ‘leave no one behind’ as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, internally displaced persons (IDPs) are often invisible and marginalized at national, regional and international levels. Second, business as usual is patently not acceptable. Concrete and measurable improvements in prevention, response and solutions to internal displacement must be achieved.