Internal Displaced Population (IDPs) in Colombia: A Review of Characteristics and Profile

Carolina Silva, El Colegio de México

According to the 2006 Inform from the High Commissioner of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Colombia has suffered the larger forced migration trouble between the countries of the Western Hemisphere, only surpassed by Sudan. Although, there is a consensus about how dramatic is this humanitarian crisis; its quantitative dimension hasn't reached a relative technician consensus. Between the factors that explain the absence of technical consensus on the IDPs measurement, the system diversity of information is one of them. Although these systems of information are not compatible, this working paper does a literature and statistics review for designing a IDPs profile, independently of the IDPs magnitudes. Thus, forced migration would be considered as a random phenomenon that more or less has a standard profile on its population. In specific, I study their socioeconomic characteristics that include age, gender, ethnical and labor insertion patterns from different IDPs sources.