Executive Summary
Background
For well over two decades, large numbers of the Somali population have been in flight— internally and externally—from violence and conflict, famine and severe food insecurity, and the impoverishment and uncertainty these bring in their wake. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia have averaged over 1 million per year since at least 2007 (with numbers spiking to nearly 2 million during the early 1990s). The number of refugees averaged nearly 600,000 per year since 1990. As of 2012, about 1 million Somali refugees lived in 124 countries worldwide, with the largest numbers by far in Ethiopia (223,000) and Kenya (512,000). The world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab in Northeastern Kenya, is home to the largest concentration of Somalis outside of Mogadishu. In recent years, the situation in Somalia has been described as among the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
