Forced migration and displaced people
Most migration involves some choice. A student who moves abroad for university, or a family that relocates for a new job, has weighed up the options and decided to go. Forced migration is different. The person feels they have no real option except to leave. It becomes a political issue for three reasons. Governments and armed groups cause much of it. Governments decide who may cross their borders. Governments are also expected to protect the people who arrive.
Movement in which a person feels compelled to leave a place because staying would put their life or wellbeing in danger.
Forced migrants are grouped by where they end up and what legal status they hold.
A person forced to leave their country and cross an international border to escape conflict or persecution, for example civil war.
People who flee natural disasters or climate change are often called "climate refugees" in the media, but that term is not officially recognised in international law. The 1951 Refugee Convention protects only people fleeing war, violence, conflict or persecution who have crossed an international border to find safety. It can still apply when climate change increases a person's risk of facing persecution or violence.
A person forced from their home who finds shelter somewhere else within their own country.
A person who is denied nationality by any country, and so is often shut out of basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.
The border is what separates a refugee from an IDP. Someone who crosses an international border to escape conflict or persecution becomes a refugee. Someone who stays inside their country, even far from home, is an IDP. This has political consequences. An IDP is still under the authority of their own government, which may be the very government they are running from. A refugee depends on the decisions of a foreign government.
Students often call anyone who has been displaced a refugee. A family that flees fighting in one city and shelters in a camp elsewhere in the same country counts as IDPs, because they never crossed a border.
Statelessness is a separate problem. A stateless person may never have moved at all. Because no state accepts them as a citizen, no government takes responsibility for them, so everyday things like enrolling in school, seeing a doctor, working legally or travelling can be blocked.
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