DRC – Mobility Tracking Round 3 Atlas (November 2023)

IOM DRC - through its Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) - has been conducting Mobility Tracking (MT) assessments since 2018. These exercises are implemented in the DRC with the aim of providing estimates on presence, number of affected population groups (IDPs, returnees), reasons for displacement, duration of displacement and specific needs within defined locations. Data for the MT exercise is collected on a bi-annual basis by teams of trained enumerators, through key informant interviews and direct observations at a village level. As part of this process, IOM ensures the participation of government representatives during data collection to promote and build capacity in the event of handover. IOM data is then presented to and validated by the provincial Population Movement Commission (Commission de mouvement de population – CMP in French).

The summary statistics presented in this report are drawn from the most recent MT round for each province, which took place between August and September 2023, to produce an overview of the displacement situation in the Eastern DRC region. 

In the four eastern provinces of the DRC, comprising Ituri, North-Kivu, South Kivu, and Tanganyika, during this assessment DTM identified 5,637,536 internally displaced people (IDPs) and 4,324,523 returnees, present in 76 per cent of assessed villages. DTM estimates that the highest proportion (41%) of IDPs (2,300,163 individuals) are hosted in North Kivu, followed by 29 per cent (1,630,535) in Ituri, 24 per cent (1,356,376) in South Kivu and 6 per cent (350,462) in Tanganyika. The most frequently reported reasons for displacement among displaced populations living in host families are attacks by armed groups (84%), inter-community conflict (12%) and natural disasters (3%). An estimated 908,920 individuals were displaced by the M23 crisis at the time of the most recently produced DTM crisis analysis.