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DTM Round Zero Sudan: Displacement Tracking Matrix (October 2019)

Countries
Sudan
Sources
IOM
Publication date
Origin
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Overview

The Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) has existed as an integral component of the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Sudan Mission for over a decade. Most of its activities have been previously conducted in response to external requests – whether from the Sudanese government or IOM’s many humanitarian partners on the ground.

This will be expanding soon, with the additional implementation of Mobility Tracking from October 2019 – a new methodology providing repeated snapshots of displacement figures on a more frequent and regular basis.

The following report presents an overview of the DTM’s dataset to date. Through the summarising of its registration figures, its number of active locations, as well as its relative registration dates, this baseline (entitled Round Zero) will provide a suitable starting point (the presence of populated locations) from which to commence Mobility Tracking in Sudan.

THE DISPLACEMENT TRACKING MATRIX

DTM is a system to track and monitor displacement and population mobility. It is implemented in over 80 countries worldwide and is designed to regularly and systematically capture, process and disseminate information to provide a better understanding of the movements and evolving needs of displaced populations, whether on site or en route. It is comprised of four distinct components, namely: mobility tracking, registration, flow monitoring and surveying.

THE DTM’S DATA PROFILE IN SUDAN

The DTM was first introduced in Sudan in 2004, to provide rapid emergency registrations with a priority of meeting immediate information needs for guiding direct assistance to vulnerable people. Since 2010, the DTM expanded to include biometric registrations and data verifications – implemented in response to government or humanitarian partner requests. To date, data has been collected in seven different states and 1,533 locations across Sudan, generating registration figures on the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees at the state, locality and locational levels. The DTM’s baseline zero is a compilation of all verified data registrations for both IDPs and returnees, commencing in 2010 and 2015 respectively.

To provide an overview of DTM’s registration activities between 2010-2019, the following tables illustrate the increasing and accumulative locational coverage that the DTM in Sudan has achieved through registration activities per year. In addition to the number of locations registered in each state, it provides an indication of the timeframe in which each location was last visited – in other words, the data’s accumulative age. This shows that 72 per cent of the total number of IDP locations have been recently updated in the past four years, 20 per cent of which were updated in 2018 and 2019 alone.

In comparison to the number of IDP locations, one can observe a far greater number of returnee locations registered each year (inclusive of both returnees from internal displacement and returnees from abroad). This reflects the differences in data collection – the majority of IDPs are registered in camps while returnees are registered in their location of origin. Lastly, the returnee dataset is shown to be younger in age – with 26 per cent of returnee locations having been last updated in 2019.

The charts below present a visual illustration of the percentage of IDPs and returnees registered between 2010-2019.3 Within the accumulative registration counts, the highest percentage of IDP data was collected in 2014-2017. Comparatively, the highest percentage of returnee data was tabulated last year (2018).