Assessing the impact of displacement on IDPs and host communities in Colombia

Assessing the impact of displacement on IDPs and host communities in Colombia

Published on 02 November 2022

Colombia has faced one of the world’s most acute internal displacement crises for more than five decades. The peace agreement signed in 2016 by the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest armed group, represented a significant step towards finding durable solutions for the country’s internally displaced people (IDPs).^[1] At the end of 2021, however, 5.2 million people remained internally displaced and many still require assistance.^[2] Conflict and violence triggered about 134,000 new displacements in 2021.^[3] The Pacific coast department of Chocó and Antioquia are two of the three departments that recorded the most displacement in the first half of 2020.^[4] [5]

Internal Displacements

This preliminary analysis starts to piece together the impact and potential policies to support IDPs beyond humanitarian support. It analyzes data collected by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in Colombia between August and September 2021 from 610 individuals – 300 internally displaced individuals and 310 people from within the host communities – across the Antioquia and Chocó regions. Women make up 53% of respondents in IDP households and hosts households. The sample size while relatively small, provides a starting point to understand progress in reaching different development outcomes based only on the households sampled. While effort was made for the sample to be representative, the representativeness does not capture the entire population of IDPs or hosts in the country.