The Oxford Handbook of Internal Displacement

The displacement of people within their own countries due to crises such as conflicts, disasters, and the effects of climate change is a major contemporary challenge, eliciting global concern about how to protect the displaced. The vast scale of this 'internal displacement' poses far-reaching questions for key debates around humanitarian aid, development, migration, sovereignty, rights, citizenship, identity, and social change. Yet knowledge of the issue is fragmented and highly dispersed across a range of academic and policy domains.

Bringing together 45 contributions by leading researchers and practitioners, the Oxford Handbook of Internal Displacement provides an essential point of reference for advancing these debates and raising the profile of internal displacement as a vital concern for research and policy agendas.

The Handbook addresses eight major areas of debate in this field of research and practice. Part I presents different conceptual understandings of internal displacement from a range of the most relevant disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy and political theory, history, law, geography, and forced migration studies. Part II of the Handbook explores the different drivers of internal displacement, embedding them in their broader social, political, and historical context. Part III addresses major internal displacement dynamics and population trends in different regions of the world. Part IV highlights the material, social and economic consequences of displacement, in terms of poverty, health, education, and housing land for the displaced. Part V addresses lived experiences of internal displacement, underscoring the agency of displaced persons in making sense of and dealing with internal displacement. Part VI of the Handbook addresses key aspects of IDP assistance and protection, including legal and policy frameworks, institutional responses, and policy and operational issues arising in this response. Part VII addresses the 'end' of internal displacement and so-called 'durable solutions' for internally displaced persons, offering compelling insights into how long-term solutions have been handled and hindered in practice. Finally, Part VIII outlines the crucial role of data in understanding and responding to internal displacement.

David Cantor, Director of the Refugee Law Initiative and Internal Displacement Research Programme, School of Advanced Study, University of London,Megan Bradley, Full Professor of Political Science and International Development Studies, McGill University,Winifred Ekezie, Lecturer in Public Health, Centre for Health and Society, Aston University,Utz Pape, Lead Economist, Poverty Department, World Bank,Natalia Baal, Head of Secretariat, Expert Group on Refugee, IDP and Statelessness Statistics/UNHCR

Professor David Cantor is the founding Director of the Refugee Law Initiative and its Internal Displacement Research Programme, at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. He brings 25 years of working on refugee and displacement issues in contexts of armed conflict, crime and disasters, especially in the Americas. David publishes widely on internal displacement, established the Researching Internal Displacement platform and convenes several networks of researchers and practitioners. He was formerly a Legal Officer at the Refugee Legal Centre and a principal advisor to UNHCR. His work won the Times Higher Education Research of the Year award.

Professor Megan Bradley is Professor and William Dawson Scholar in Political Science and International Development Studies at McGill University in Montreal, where her work focuses on the global governance of forced migration, humanitarianism and transitional justice. She served from 2012-2014 as a Fellow with the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. She has conducted fieldwork on internal displacement in conflict and disaster situations, including in Haiti, the United States, Philippines and Sri Lanka. Her work spans international relations, political theory and historical approaches. She currently serves as co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Refugee Studies.


Dr Winifred Ekezie is a Lecturer in Public Health at Aston University and a core member of the Health and Internal Displacement Network. With expertise in epidemiology, she researches the health of marginalised groups, including migrants and ethnic minorities. She has conducted research on IDPs in Nigeria and has published extensively, including on IDP health financing, primary health service availability, health management, and community involvement. She brings expertise in monitoring and evaluation, health advocacy, and policy analysis. She directs the Centre for Health and Society at Aston University and is the Evidence Synthesis Coordinator for the Avoidable Death Network.

Dr Utz Pape is Lead Economist in the World Bank. He works with governments to inform policies towards poverty reduction and shared prosperity, while improving national statistical systems. His work experience in post-conflict countries contributes to his research around policy, development and public health. His award-winning research is published in top-ranking peer-reviewed journals, including British Medical Journal, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Journal of Development Economics, The Lancet, Nature and Science Advances. In 2020, he co-edited a book on Data Collection in Fragile States: Innovations from Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and a Ph.D. in Sciences.

Natalia Krynsky Baal brings over a decade of practitioner experience working with governments and across the humanitarian/development sector to improve data and knowledge on internal displacement. She is Head of the Secretariat for the Expert Group on Refugee, IDP and Statelessness Statistics and previously was a Senior Strategy and Policy Officer at the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center. Before that she was Coordinator of the Joint IDP Profiling Service. She has worked across countries including Afghanistan, Colombia, Ukraine, Somalia, Mali, Kosovo and Central African Republic, and has authored several publications on this topic.

Dr Melissa Weihmayer supported the editorial team throughout the development of this Handbook, bringing in networks of early career researchers. Her extensive work on migration and displacement spans the legal, policy, academic and humanitarian sectors. She managed large-scale data collection projects on internal displacement in Central America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East with the Joint IDP Profiling Service. She has also published in top-ranking peer-reviewed journals on the governance of forced migration, including how local governments respond to situations of urban internal displacement. She holds a Ph.D. in Regional and Urban Planning Studies from the London School of Economics.