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IOM Counts Excess of 131,000 Internally Displaced Persons in Northern Ethiopia Crisis

Idp Alert

Severity score54 / 100 · High

How the score is calculated

The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.

Affected people
1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
Deaths
1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
Displaced people
1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
Casualties
100 or more: +8
Story wording
+10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.

Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.

This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.

Last verified9 Mar 2021
Date
Status
CLOSED
Aid Zone
AFRICA
Countries
Ethiopia
Agency
IOM

Historical record

Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07

Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.

Permanent node 650 · Historical archive

In brief

  • What happenedDTM staff are gathering data at a collective center hosting IDPs in Shire © IOM 2021 Addis Ababa – Over 131,000 people are displaced in 39 accessible locations in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and neighbouring Afar and Amhara according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) ’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) survey, the first official data of this type on the crisis in Northern Ethiopia that began in November 2020.
  • How many affectedAffected persons: 131,000 · Displaced persons: 131,000
  • What help is neededMany displaced persons – including women and children – reportedly are in need of emergency shelter, food and access to clean and safe drinking water.

What changed

First retained snapshot

No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.

Situation

DTM staff are gathering data at a collective center hosting IDPs in Shire © IOM 2021 Addis Ababa – Over 131,000 people are displaced in 39 accessible locations in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and neighbouring Afar and Amhara according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) ’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) survey, the first official data of this type on the crisis in Northern Ethiopia that began in November 2020. The data are not indicators of the total number of persons displaced due to the crisis, but rather represent only the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in sites accessible to DTM surveyors. Almost 70 per cent (91,046) are in Tigray, 26 per cent (34,091) are in Afar and 5 per cent (6,453) are in Amhara. Many displaced persons – including women and children – reportedly are in need of emergency shelter, food and access to clean and safe drinking water. Since the beginning of the crisis, IOM has been monitoring the humanitarian and displacement situation through its Emergency Site Assessment (ESA), an area-based assessment, which captures the number of displaced persons, their locations and needs. This new assessment was conducted from 22 December to 14 January, and the findings from this data collection exercise were released this week. The DTM gathers and analyzes data on population estimates, vulnerabilities, and the needs of displaced populations. In the three regions, IOM identified 30,383 displaced households. IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix will continue to expand its assessment coverage in the north so that the needs of more internally displaced persons can be assessed. Since 2018, the Displacement Tracking Matrix has been the official source for displacement numbers in Ethiopia. DTM works in collaboration with the National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC). The ESA is conducted monthly to capture changes in the displacement dynamics and needs and is deployed in all accessible locations that reportedly host 20 IDP households or more. The information collected includes data such as population estimates, demographics, vulnerabilities, multisectoral needs and functionality status of infrastructure and services. This assessment captures detailed information through key informants, focus group discussions and direct observation. The assessment was conducted in Western, Northwestern, Southeastern and Southern zones of Tigray region, as Central and Eastern zones were not accessible during the time of data collection. IOM Ethiopia’s Emergency Site Assessment Round 2 Report can be found here. DTM assessment activities were funded by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of Germany. For more information, contact Sarah Choong at IOM Ethiopia, Email: schoong@iom.int , or Kaye Viray, Email: kkviray@iom.int International Organization for Migration Copyright © IOM. All rights reserved

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WorldsAid verification

A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 1 attributed source, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 2 human-impact figures were separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.

Verified figures

Affected persons
131,000 retained at 2021-03-09
Displaced persons
131,000 retained at 2021-03-09

What we knew when

  1. WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
  2. Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.

Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.

Provenance

This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.

Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz

Record integrity:
VerifiedSHA-256 366bab67b70e9e2b5510cc50b3feba3e5a1b4726207059499f0ce4dfd40ac8a8

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