Internally Displaced People, Ukraine 2014.

By Oleksandr Talavera (University of Sheffield, UK)

How to help internally displaced people (IDP) is one of the key problems faced by Ukrainian government after Crimea annexation by Russia and fighting with separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Eastern Ukraine. This is a new problem for Ukraine as it never faced any war conflict in its modern history. At the same time a number of former Soviet Union republics faced this issue. For example, at least 34,900 IDPs, mainly from Chechnya and North Ossetia, are reported in Russia. 172,000 people were displaced in Southern Kyrgyzstan after the conflict between the Kyrgyz majority and the Uzbek minority in June 2010. The scale of the problem was particularly large in Georgia and Azerbaijan. After Karabakh war about 600,000 people were displaced in Azerbaijan which constitutes 6.2% of population. Moreover, about 5% of Georgians were displaced after conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.