Pastoral Orientations on Internally Displaced People
At the end of 2018, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), 41.3 million people were internally displaced worldwide, the highest number in recorded history. The Church recognizes the definition of internally displaced people (IDPs) provided by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (1998): “persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places 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
