A timeline of the definitions
Displacement statistics are projections of legal categories. This page records the history of the categories themselves — how each expansion changed who gets counted, and where to brake when reading.
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1951 · The Refugee Convention
Defines "refugee" — but only for events in Europe before 1951.
Effect on the statistics: The first annual count (about 2.1 million) covers post-war Europe. Numbers before the mid-1960s describe a legally narrower world.
1967 · The Protocol
Removes the geographic and temporal limits — "refugee" becomes universal.
Effect on the statistics: From here, counts from different continents become comparable in principle.
1969 · The OAU Convention (Africa)
Adds objective grounds: external aggression, occupation, events seriously disturbing public order.
Effect on the statistics: African host countries recognise large groups without individual determination — visible as large, round figures in the data.
1984 · The Cartagena Declaration (Latin America)
Non-binding but widely adopted: generalised violence and massive human-rights violations as grounds.
Effect on the statistics: Underpins how Latin American states would later receive Venezuelans — mostly outside the refugee column (see 2018).
2004 · Statelessness enters the statistics
UNHCR begins systematic reporting on stateless persons, by country of residence only.
Effect on the statistics: On this site the timeline is hatched before 2004 — the blank is structural, not "not reported". Many countries still report nothing.
2009 · IDPs enter this dataset (via IDMC)
Conflict- and violence-driven internal displacement, compiled by IDMC, is published through UNHCR.
Effect on the statistics: Disaster displacement is NOT included in the annual stock — a bigger number exists elsewhere. Both views count IDPs under their own country.
2018 · OIP is created
"Other people in need of international protection" — invented because millions of Venezuelans fit no existing column.
Effect on the statistics: The single largest definitional break in recent data. Comparing "refugees" across 2017/2018 without OIP misreads the Venezuelan exodus as absent.
How this site shows the breakpoints
- On the timeline, each metric's first-collected year is hatched and labelled (stateless 2004, OIP 2018).
- Every metric carries its definition and caveats, embedded in every download.
- Colour classes are fixed across all years, so colour means magnitude — but what a magnitude means is still bounded by that year's categories. This page is that footnote.
方法論 ·How to cite responsibly · Story: seventy-five years of counting