I. Who are IDPs? According to the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (UNGPID), internally displaced persons or IDPs are "persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or humanmade disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized border."1 IDPs include evacuees who have been forced to leave their habitual residences for safety and security reasons or due to threats to life caused by either natural calamities or human-induced circumstances. They also include those who have been constrained to leave their place of origin and have moved to settlements other than evacuation centers, i.e. homes of relatives. Unlike refugees2, IDPs are those who have not sought protection outside national boundaries and are, therefore, not covered by the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees.3 Forced displacement often results in the heightened vulnerability of affected populations. IDPs have limited (or even no) access to necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, water, and health and sanitation services. This leads to higher rates of mortality and malnutrition in IDPs, especially for those IDPs who are children, pregnant and lactating women, persons with disability, and elderly. Displacement also increases an affected person’s vulnerability to physical attacks, sexual assaults, abduction, and other civil and political rights violations.4 Their economic activities are also disrupted, making them easy prey to exploitation and abuse such as trafficking. II. What is displacement and what causes it? Displacement is characterized by the forced migration or arbitrary expulsion of people and communities from their places of origin. For the purposes of this User’s Guide, displacement is categorized as disaster-induced displacement (displacements caused by earthquakes, flood, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, landslides, tsunami, and the like), conflict-induced displacement (displacements caused by armed conflict, generalized violence, and organized violence) and development-induced displacement (displacements caused by dams, urban infrastructures, highways, mineral extractions and explorations, land conversion, business intrusion, land conversion, etc.). Introduction, Paragraph 2, UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, 1998. to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, a "refugee" is a person who, "owing to wellfounded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it." 3http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c146.html 4http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IDPersons/Pages/Issues.aspx 1 2According 3