Surveys of Palestinian IDPs

1
Surveys of Palestinian IDPs

• Workshop on Profiling of Internally Displaced
  Persons
• Brussels, March 23 23, 2007 Jon Pedersen

2
Profiling IDPs some difficulties

• Defining them
• In a way that they identify with
• In a way acceptable to the country
• In a way that secures their protection
• In a way that can actually be employed in a
  survey or census
• Finding them
• Often relatively small part of the population in
  an area
• Often clustered
• Often very similar to rest of the population
• Sometimes elusive
• Palestinian IDPs in Jordan are more difficult to
  define than find

3
Palestinian IDPs in Jordan

• Must be seen in the context of Palestinian
  refugees in Jordan
• Categories
• 1948 Refugees
• 1967 Refugees
• 1967 Displaced
• Three main groups
• Directly displaced by 1967 war
• Lived in East Bank prior to 1967, but origin in
  West Bank
• 1948 refugees in the West Bank displaced by 1967
  war
• In principle not protected or helped by UNRWA,
  but in practice often
• Late comers
• Arrived in Jordan after 1967, may be refugees or
  displaced
• Gaza refugees
• Patrilineal succession of refugee/IDP status

4
Legal status somewhat special

• Jordan annexed West Bank, but later relinquished
  it
• In Declaration of Principles from 1993 Israel
  implicitly agrees on return (Article XII) as
  agreement refers to modalities on return rather
  than the question of return.
• Negotiations in Quadripartite committee soon
  foundered, mainly on the question of definition

5
Design of Jordan surveys

• IDPs and refugees make up large percentage of
  total population (IDPs 13.6 of population)
• National surveys in 1996 and 2003 (in camps in
  2001)
• Strategy for definition
• Accept the populations own definition of status
• Ask for each person
• Ask for other criteria relevant for other actors
• Age (i.e. born before or after 1967)
• Place of origin (East/west bank)
• Migration history
• Not specific IDP/Refugee surveys, but aimed to
  see these groups in the context of other groups

6
Choice of indicators

• Two sets of indicators
• Status indicators
• Living conditions indicators
• Two main ideas behind the living conditions
  indicators
• Commonly used indicators (e.g. Infant mortality,
  MDG-type)
• Arenas, resources, values, outcomes

7
Political challenges larger than methodological

• Political
• Actually managing to get permission to include
  question in survey
• Publishing results
• Refugee category and Palestinian perhaps more
  difficult than IDPs
• But specific definitions not as difficult as
  opening up the debate
• Everyone afraid of comparison to rest of the
  population

8
But methodological not irrelevant

• Clustering
• Clustering common for IDPs, because of chain
  migration
• Palestinians often extremely clustered, because
  of strong tendency to reproduce locality based
  spatial organization
• Leads to relatively large standard errors on many
  variables

9
Use

• Giving substance to issue of numbers
• Stimulating social dialogue
• Input to the Quadripartite process
• Definition of support more in relation to
  refugees than to IDPs (because refugee issues
  focus a lot on camps)

10
Political/Methodological

• Comparing non-IDP with IDP
• Who are disadvantaged?
• Are disadvantages due to IDP-status or other
  characteristics (i.e. do IDPs in Amman differ
  from other immigrants to Amman?)