Global: Older people face the greater burden of displacement

Experts say older people are affected more severely than the rest of the population during displacement. 'People who have energy can resist or run or take away belongings. An old person doesn't have the energy to do all this. So in cases of forced evictions, for instance, they lose a home and lose belongings and also a critical social network,' Protus Waringa, a Kenyan human rights law expert, told IRIN. Globally, an estimated 26.4 million people were displaced by armed conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations at the end of 2011, according to a 2011 overview by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC); the overview noted that there were huge gaps in the data available on older IDPs, with just six out of 50 countries making specific reference to older persons in their data on IDPs.