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A displaced person (sometimes abbreviated DP) is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration
Forced migration

Forced migration refers to the coerced movement of a person or persons away from their home or home region. It often connotes violent coercion, and is used interchangeably with the terms "displacement" or forced displacement....
.

term was first widely used during World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
 and the resulting refugee outflows from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
, when it was used to specifically refer to one removed from his or her native country as a refugee
Refugee

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecutionOwing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
, prisoner
Prison

A prison, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or internment and usually deprived of a range of personal Freedom ....
 or a slave laborer
Unfree labour

Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for those work relations, especially in modern history or Early Modern period history, in which people are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence , or other extreme hardship to themselves, or to members of their families....
. The meaning has significantly broadened in the past half-century.






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Encyclopedia


A displaced person (sometimes abbreviated DP) is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration
Forced migration

Forced migration refers to the coerced movement of a person or persons away from their home or home region. It often connotes violent coercion, and is used interchangeably with the terms "displacement" or forced displacement....
.

Origin of term

The term was first widely used during World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
 and the resulting refugee outflows from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
, when it was used to specifically refer to one removed from his or her native country as a refugee
Refugee

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecutionOwing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
, prisoner
Prison

A prison, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or internment and usually deprived of a range of personal Freedom ....
 or a slave laborer
Unfree labour

Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for those work relations, especially in modern history or Early Modern period history, in which people are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence , or other extreme hardship to themselves, or to members of their families....
. The meaning has significantly broadened in the past half-century. A displaced person may also be referred to as a forced migrant. The term "refugee" is also commonly used as a synonym for displaced person, causing confusion between the general descriptive class of anyone who has left their home and the subgroup of legally defined refugee
Refugee

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecutionOwing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
s who enjoy specified international legal protection.

A.J. Jaffe claimed that the term was originally coined by Eugene M. Kulischer
Eugene M. Kulischer

Eugene M. Kulischer An authority on demography, migration, and manpower, and an expert on Russia, Kulischer coined the phrase ?displaced persons? and was among the first to seek to document the number of persons lost in the Holocaust as well as the subsequent relocation of millions of Europeans after WWII....
.

International law aspects

If the displaced person has crossed an international border and falls under one of the relevant international legal instruments
Refugee law

Refugee law is the branch of international law which deals with the rights and protection of refugees. It is related to, but distinct from, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, which deal respectively with human rights in general, and the conduct of war in particular....
, they are considered a refugee
Refugee

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecutionOwing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
. A forced migrant who left his or her home because of political persecution or violence, but did not cross an international border, is commonly considered to be the less well-defined category of internally displaced person
Internally displaced person

Internally displaced persons are people forced to flee their homes but who, unlike refugees, remain within their country's borders. At the end of 2006 estimates of the world IDP population rose to 24.5 million in some 52 countries....
 (IDP), and is subject to more tenuous international protection. The forced displacement of a number of refugee
Refugee

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecutionOwing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
s or internally displaced person
Internally displaced person

Internally displaced persons are people forced to flee their homes but who, unlike refugees, remain within their country's borders. At the end of 2006 estimates of the world IDP population rose to 24.5 million in some 52 countries....
s according to an identifiable policy is an example of population transfer
Population transfer

Population transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion....
. A displaced person who crosses an international border without permission from the country they are entering is an illegal immigrant. The most visible recent case of this is the large number of North Korea
North Korea

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula....
ns who have settled in the border region of China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
.

A migrant who fled because of economic hardship is an economic migrant. A special sub-set of this is development-induced displacement
Development-induced displacement

Development-induced displacement is the forcing of communities and individuals out of their homes, often also their homelands, for the purposes of economic development....
, in which the forced migrant was forced out their home because of economically-driven projects like that of the Three Gorges Dam
Three Gorges Dam

The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectricity river dam that spans the Yangtze River in Sandouping, Yichang, Hubei, China. It is the List of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world....
 in China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
 and various India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
n dams. The internally displaced person generally refers to one who is forced to migrate for reasons other than economic conditions, such as war or persecution. There is a body of opinion that holds that persons subject to development-induced displacement
Development-induced displacement

Development-induced displacement is the forcing of communities and individuals out of their homes, often also their homelands, for the purposes of economic development....
 should have greater legal protection than that granted economic migrants.

Persons are often displaced due to natural
Natural disaster

A natural disaster is the consequence of a natural hazard which affects human activities. Human vulnerability, exacerbated by the lack of planning or appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, environmental or human losses....
 or man-made disasters. No specific international legal instrument applies to such individuals, though their welfare remains the responsibility of the state to which they are citizens. Foreign nations often offer disaster relief to mitigate the effects of such disaster displacement.

Following the effects of Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest Atlantic hurricane, as well as one of the five deadliest, in the history of the United States....
 in 2005, the term "refugee" was sometimes used to describe people displaced by the storm and the aftereffects. There was an outcry that the term should not be used to describe Americans displaced within their own county, and the term "evacuee" was substituted in its place .

See also


  • Displaced persons camp
    Displaced persons camp

    A displaced persons camp is in principle any temporary facility for displaced persons. In recent times Displaced Persons Camps have existed in many parts of the world for many kinds of people, including for people in the Darfur region of the Sudan, for Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan, and for Afghan refugees in Pakistan....
    : DP camps following World War II
  • Earl G. Harrison
    Earl G. Harrison

    Earl Grant Harrison was an United States Lawyer, academician, and public servant. He is chiefly remembered for his work on behalf of displaced persons in the aftermath of the World War II, when he brought attention to the plight of Sh'erit ha-Pletah in a crucial report he submitted to President Harry S....
    's "Report on DPs in Western Europe in 1945" to U.S. President Harry S. Truman
    Harry S. Truman

    Harry S. Truman was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States . As the List of Vice Presidents of the United States Vice President of the United States, he succeeded Franklin D....
  • April 1986 Chernobyl disaster
    Chernobyl disaster

    The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale....
     created over 336,000 internally displaced persons


External links

  • - Features by Jean-Michel Clajot, Belgian photographer
  • Refugee and Migrant news relating to the Asia - Pacific region.
  • world's most widely read magazine on displacement issues: published in four languages
  • from Oxford University
  • - Images of displacement in Sudan
  • Hilton, Ella E. "Displaced Person: A Girl's Life in Russia, Germany, and America".Baton Rouge LA. :Louisiana State University Press
    Louisiana State University Press

    The Louisiana State University Press, founded in 1935, is a nonprofit book publisher dedicated to the publication of scholarly, general interest, and regional books....
     July 2006. ISBN 978-0-8071-3192-3