Gloria, only thirteen years old, lives with her family at the M’Poko International Airport in Bangui. They were sent here as a result of armed violence in the Central African Republic in December 2013 (Feidangai). Two years later, in September 2015, the camp was ordered to close because of its proximity to the airport runway. The thirteen-year-old girl gave a quote to Feidangai, a volunteer of the Central African Red Cross, saying “We lost everything to the violence. My father lost his job and we all dropped out of school. At times we eat and at other times we go hungry for days. We are all grateful for the package that we have received, but we have nowhere to go and are still lacking many basic essentials to restart our lives” (qtd. in Feidangai). This narrative is the story of over 40 million people. Every year, millions are uprooted by violence, climate change, natural disaster, and even wars. Governments neglect to recognize this as a such a vast problem because most of the time the people forced to flee never cross a border to enter another country therefore they are not immigrants nor are they refugees in the eyes of the government. Stunningly, the number of people who are internally displaced is double that of refugees. The international community must do more work to provide humanitarian aid for the displaced that are getting lost at home.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) is defined by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre as “Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or place 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 State border” (qtd. in “What is Internal Displacement?”). The difference between an internally displaced person and a refugee is that an IDP has not crossed a border for safety, but instead they are still on the run at home.

Displacement is by no means a new problem. As early as 1955, as a result of a two decade long civil war in Sudan thousands were displaced (Zampiana). Renewed violence in Sudan led to 660,000 displaced people by the end of 2014. Even major wars, including World War II and the Vietnam War, resulted in 63 million displaced peoples. Today, conflicts in Syria and Iraq lead to the displacement of over 15 million people. Of course, this is just the displaced between two countries. Many other Asian, African, and even European countries are facing the problem. Despite these facts, internal displacement has only been on the radar of non-governmental organizations since the 1990s.

As a result, the only official document regarding displacement was introduced to the United Nations in 1998. This document titled “The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement” provides thirty major principles to follow in regards to dealing with internal displacement. Included in them is the simple, yet elusive establishment of the fact that “every human being has the right to dignity and physical, mental, and moral integrity” (“Summary of UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement”). The Guiding Principles surround protection and assistance from displacement, during displacement and following displacement. There are a few more documents regarding displacement, but there are no official, specific laws on internal displacement.

Instead, there are a few things that are being done when there is widespread displacement. As mentioned in the story of Gloria, camps are often set up by volunteer humanitarian organizations. Women and children are the most affected by displacement due to the nature of their forced movement often being a result of war and violence, so providing food and shelter for the displaced is imperative. CNN released a report entitled “Inside Nigeria’s Internal Displacement Camp.” In the report, they share how the access to clean drinking water and toilets is difficult, as 100 people might share a toilet. They include various pictures, including multiple pictures of the tarp tents on the empty grass and dirt lots unaccompanied with any items because the displaced often have nothing with them when they are forced to flee.

There were two main approaches to provide aid for those displaced. The first was the collaborative approach. Simply, the collaborative approach is the responsibility of humanitarian organizations to protect and assist IDPs, particularly within the UN. The collaborative approach had one major problem. The main problem that surrounding the collaborative approach being that international governments, even the governments of the countries from which people were displaced, believed that they were not apart of the responsibility to protect and assist. Another problem was that trying to have multiple groups working all at once to help these displaced people with no sort of organization proved to be very ineffective. The second approach, replacing the collaborative approach, is the cluster approach. This is a much more effective approach, providing more organization to the aid. They came up with ten sectors of humanitarian interventions by “cluster” (“Working With Internal Displacement”).

Now, what needs to be done to address displacement can be modeled in the ideas of Germany and the United Nations Development Programme in their “Integrated Regional Stabilization of the Lake Chad Basin.” The idea is to develop and enact projects to provide prolonged stabilization to the four countries and various cities affected by displacement in the Lake Chad Basin. Germany will give nearly 7 million dollars to the UNDP to complete the projects. International governments teaming up to provide more humanitarian aid to help provide stabilization before, during, and after displacement.

Many argue that, as Americans, we already put too much towards foreign aid, and that the involvement of international governments to aid the displaced is a privilege not an obligation. However, in regards to the U.S., less than 1 percent of the budget goes toward foreign aid (Greenberg). But, both military and various humanitarian assistance programs are included under “foreign aid.” The U.S. State Department budget 2017 request was $50 billion for foreign aid, with $8.5 billion for health programs and $5.8 billion for military assistance. The total of the U.S. budget is $4.15 trillion dollars, which means that foreign aid accounts for hardly .35 percent of the proposed 2017 budget.

This means we can do and give much more to aid displacement, but many people do not even know what displacement is. All we ever here in the news is about immigrants. Occasionally we will hear about refugees, but we rare to never here about displacement. Therefore, we also need to educate ourselves and bring more media attention to the problem of displacement in the U.S. In fact, the U.S. itself has faced several bouts of displacement following Hurricane Sandy and even recently with Hurricane Harvey; of course the displacement that has occurred in the U.S.  is not on as large a scale as the displacement occurring in foreign countries. Internal displacement is a large problem that we need to combat. Through providing more aid, becoming more attentive to international news, and even joining a humanitarian organization and volunteering with them are all elusive, simple acts that we can do to help aid those who are lost at home.