Guidance For Profiling Urban Displacement Situations - Challenges And Solutions - Joint IDP Profiling Service - June 2014

Sep 11, 2026

Uploaded by Rhys

June 2014 Guidance For Profiling Urban Displacement Situations - Challenges And Solutions presents how humanitarian and development actors can profile internally displaced persons and refugees in urban contexts. It explains why urban displacement is often treated as indistinguishable from broader urban poverty, yet requires targeted information on specific risks such as unemployment, housing insecurity, discrimination, and children missing school. The guidance frames profiling as a transparent, ethical, collaborative process that collects comparative data on displaced and non-displaced households within the same neighbourhood to support advocacy, protection, and programming decisions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages48

Reading Time17 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

How is profiling in urban settings different?

Need for profiling

Advocacy and awareness raising

Process management

Methodology

Questionnaires and analysis plans

Data collection and field organisation

Data analysis, validation and reporting

Dissemination and community feedback

Conclusion

JUNE 2014 GUIDANCE FOR PROFILING URBAN DISPLACEMENT SITUATIONS CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS JOINT IDP PROFILING SERVICE Guidance For Profiling Urban Displacement Situations: Challenges And Solutions Joint IDP Profiling Service June 2014 Authors: Karen Jacobsen and Ivan Cardona Reviewer: Natalia Baal Contributors: Margharita Lundkvist-Houndoumadi, Eric Levron and William Chemaly Design: Giulia Boo Joint IDP Profiling Service 23 Avenue de France, CH-1202 Geneva 94 Rue de Montbrillant, CH-1201 Geneva + 41 22 552 22 77 [www.jips.org](www.jips.org) © JIPS 2014 The Guidance was funded by American taxpayers through a grant from the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (BPRM) . The Joint IDP Profiing Service and UNHCR are grateful for BPRM’s ongoing support and commitment to improved information gathering in humanitarian settings. GUIDANCE FOR PROFILING URBAN DISPLACEMENT SITUATIONS CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS JOINT IDP PROFILING SERVICE ABOUT JIPS JIPS – the Joint IDP Profiling Service – is an inter-agency service that provides technical support to humanitarian and development actors implementing profiling exercises in displacement situations. Our goal is to promote collaborative responses to displacement by supporting actors to collect and analyse profiling data through consensus-building processes. Set up in 2009, JIPS is supervised by a Steering Committee comprised of the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (NRC-IDMC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the Office of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of IDPs , the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) . CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 7 HOW IS PROFILING IN URBAN SETTINGS DIFFERENT? 10 NEED FOR PROFILING 12 ADVOCACY AND AWARENESS RAISING 16 PROCESS MANAGEMENT 18 METHODOLOGY 21 QUESTIONNAIRES AND ANALYSIS PLANS 30 DATA COLLECTION AND FIELD ORGANISATION 34 DATA ANALYSIS, VALIDATION AND REPORTING 38 DISSEMINATION AND COMMUNITY FEEDBACK 41 CONCLUSION 44 INTRODUCTION Most of the world’s forcibly displaced population – refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs)– reside in urban settings today, and how to locate, advocate for, and assist both them and their host families is a set of unsolved challenges. Many argue that it makes no sense to try to distinguish displaced people from the wider urban population – that all urban poor are ‘displaced’ in one form or another, and that everyone faces the same problems of crime, crumbling infrastructure, poverty and unemployment. Particularly internally displaced persons, it has been argued, are indistinguishable from rural migrants, and trying to identify “IDPs” is a useless exercise at best and misguided (even foolish) at worst. There is no doubt that humanitarian and development agencies need to understand the mix of needs and capacities of everyone living in poor urban settings in order to design and monitor the most effective programs. However, it is also true that not everyone faces the same challenges. Some groups, including refugees and IDPs, face specific problems related to their forced displacement, including loss of family members, livelihood sources and assets, traumatic experiences, discrimination and continued risk of persecution. A growing body of evidence from urban areas1 suggests that, compared with other groups, displaced persons are more likely to: • be unemployed, or work in insecure or low-paid sectors, • live in female headed households, • have children who are working instead of at school, • have higher levels of debt, • experience housing insecurity, and • feel discriminated against by the community. In addition, displaced people often liv

FAQs

Why is profiling in urban settings different from rural displacement profiling?

Urban displaced people often live close to or within non-displaced households, so profiling must collect comparative data from both groups in the same neighbourhood. Challenges also overlap with broader urban poverty, making targeted identification difficult.

What needs does the guidance argue profiling should address in urban displacement situations?

Profiling is presented as necessary to understand the mix of needs and capacities among displaced people, their host families, and non-displaced neighbours. The guidance links profiling to designing and monitoring more effective programs.

How does the guidance define profiling and what principles should guide it?

Profiling is described as a collaborative information-gathering process to identify and compile data on IDP or refugee households and individuals. It emphasizes transparency, ethical considerations, and active buy-in from partner organizations and government actors at all stages.

Sep 11, 2026

Uploaded by Rhys