Policy Brief: Internal Displacement and Health

Published on February 1, 2021

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This briefing presents the findings and recommendations of a global workshop of over 30 experts in health research, practice and policy from fifteen countries, which was convened by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Internal Displacement Research Programme in February 2021. For further detail, see the workshop outcome report and the background discussion paper for the meeting.
IDPs experience worse morbidity and mortality than other conflict-affected populations Conflict-affected IDPs have significantly worse morbidity and mortality then other populations in, and from, conflict-affected countries. This pattern exists across a range of health areas, including communicable/vectorborne diseases and mental health disorders. This adverse impact of internal displacement on health can be long-lasting, inter-generational and differentiated by gender and age.

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Researching Internal Displacement publishes engaging and insightful short pieces of writing, artistic and research outputs, policy briefings and think pieces on internal displacement.

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By Silvia Cantú Bautista, María Maldonado Antillón, Daniela Chapuz Osorio, Juan Manuel Orozco Moreno | Oct 1, 2026

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By Guled Ali | Sep 17, 2026

This insightful article examines durable solutions programming to conflict and climate-related displacement in the Horn of Africa. Despite growing investments in durable solutions by development actors, the stated programmatic goals of restoring self-reliance, dignity and stability to displacement-affected communities remain elusive. Instead, climatic stressors, especially drought, regularly undermine the stability that solutions programming is intended to deliver. The blog calls for a fundamental shift in how durable solutions are understood in the context of climate change. Experience in the Horn of Africa demonstrates that durable solutions must be positioned not as a fixed end-state achieved once people have returned home or resettled elsewhere and pre-displacement conditions have been restored, but as an ongoing adaptive process that enables people and communities to build the capacities needed to adapt to future environmental shocks. Otherwise, the author argues, communities that appear to be progressing toward self-reliance are likely to experience re-displacement, protracted displacement and other setbacks as subsequent climate shocks erode recovery gains.