As of December 2018, more than 41 million people are displaced within the borders of their own country by conflict and human rights violations alone. Each year, another 25 million people on average are displaced due to disaster. 

On 17 April 1998, the Commission on Human Rights adopted the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. They remain the most widely recognized standard to prevent, respond to and resolve internal displacement. The unprecedented volume and duration of internal displacement today reminds us that much more work needs to be done. 

The GP20 Plan of Action, launched on the 20th Anniversary of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in 2018, urges the humanitarian and international community to do more to prevent the conditions that lead to displacement as well as advancing protection and solutions for IDPs. 

It is an opportunity to empower internally displaced people, involve them in the responses and solutions that affect them, strengthen partnerships and operational responses and promote a stronger political agenda on internal displacement. 

It is the time to amplify the voices of one of the world’s most vulnerable mobile populations.