Ukraine - Estimates on Internally Displaced People

The estimation is based on data received from authorities, partners, and colleagues present on the field. It considers a clusterized approach (applying various estimation methodology based on geographic location and context), on top of the historical data from the past, and the refugee flows. The Clusterized approach follows the logic of types of IDP location:

I. Cities/settlements within close proximity (100K population). According to information available on the public sources, number of IDPs in Lvivcity is 200K. Having the total population of Lviv city as 715K, then the proportion is 28%. The Protection Cluster applied a ratio of 25% for all other remaining Oblast centers and big cities to estimate IDP population within this category.

III. Main Transit Cities (Zaporizhzhya, Krivyi Rih, Kirovohrad, Uman and others in Central part). In this cluster of so-called “transit cities”, which accommodate people on the move, the Protection Cluster considered information coming from the Protection Monitoring Tool. Finally, in terms of historical data and refugee flows, the Protection Cluster considered that close to 50% of the total population became IDPs in conflict affected areas in 2014, and used IWS layer of (https://www.understandingwar.org/) - extending it by 20km in order to count affected population (around 12M as of 7 March 2022), and took into account movement restrictions as well as individuals already outside Ukraine (more than 2M).

The methodology for estimation of IDPs contains limitations, but will continue to be improved as new data sources become available - and maintained until there is another credible source of information identified by the Protection Cluster. In this regard, both REACH and IOM are working together to collect information and provide the humanitarian community with reliable data on IDPs in Ukraine. In parallel, the humanitarian partners will continue to support the Government of Ukraine with their data collection efforts as well. For any queries, please contact: ukraineinfomanagement@unhcr.org or protectionclusterukraine@unhcr.org