UN names Ukraine ninth in the world by the number of internally displaced persons
Neal Walker, United Nations Resident Coordinator and Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Ukraine, has said that Ukraine ranks ninth in the world by number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
"1.6 million Internally Displaced Persons are registered in Ukraine. Ukraine is the ninth largest country in the world in terms of the number of Internally Displaced Persons," he said during a discussion titled The Key to a Peace Agenda is in the Hands of Ukraine’s Internally Displaced Persons, which took place on Tuesday in Kyiv.
The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) statistical yearbook for 2015 (most recent version) states that at that time, the only countries with more IDPs were Colombia (6.94 million people), Syria (6.56 million people), Iraq (4.4 million people), Sudan (3.22 million people), Yemen (2.53 million people), Nigeria (2.17 million people), and Southern Sudan (1.79 million people). Additionally, the number of displaced persons the Democratic Republic of the Congo (about 1.56 million people) was commensurate to the number in Ukraine.
Walker added that Ukraine does not currently have an integrated strategy for working with Internally Displaced Persons that could be implemented by state bodies.
According to UN principles, Internally Displaced Persons are defined as 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 human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized border.