About Population Watch
The number of displaced people around the world has increased consistently over the past 10 years. The total number doubles every seven or eight years and this upward trend shows no sign of declining. There are currently around 37 million uprooted people in the world, forced to flee their homes and seek shelter elsewhere, usually because of war, economic or natural disasters. Of these, more than 22 million are internally displaced within their country and approximately 15 million are refugees, who have fled to another country.
When population movement occurs, it is important to immediately distinguish whether those on-the-move are Trafficked, Refugees, Internally displaced or Migrants (TRIM). The distinction is important since support mechanisms and the legal status of the people can affect the response operation.
Population Watch (PopWatch) is a Nepal-based non-governmental, non-partisan, non-profit, think-tank human rights caucus registered with HMG-Nepal. PopWatch works within the paradigm of population movement through educational, technical, legal and information assistance programs to the moving population. Initiated by all women of diverse professional backgrounds, PopWatch aims to establish a regional clearing house and action-based information bank on population movement.
Though relatively a new endeavor, PopWatch is an enabling support mechanism working in partnership with government authorities, the private sector, and civil society organizations, on national, regional and international level, to promote safe and orderly population movement. A forum of lawyers, physicians, gender experts, journalists, peace educators, anthropologists, human rights defenders and researchers, it strives for enhancing rights-based dimensions in the field of population movement by serving as a catalyst for social transformation along with development and dissemination of innovative approaches & exchange of information.
PopWatch entails to work on the following four crucial domains of population movement:
- First Domain: Trafficking
- Second Domain: Refugees
- Third Domain: Internally displaced persons (IDPs)
- Fourth Domain: Migrant population