Mogadishu hosts a considerable IDP population. Based on UNOCHA data, as of July 2025, out of 4 700 verified IDP sites across the country, Mogadishu was home to 2 493 of them, all districts considered, with an overall population of more than 1.1 million people.26 According to a 2025 Risk Mapping Exercise conducted by the Peach Hub Foundation, the overall number of IDP sites in Benadir (Mogadishu) would be 2 565.27
As of November 2025, Dayniile and Khada districts, which host the vast majority of IDP people in the city, were the location of 1 029 and 1 241 verified IDP sites respectively.28 Among others, another district with a large IDP population is Hodan,29 which hosted, as of November 2026, 87 verified IDP sites, while the rest was distributed across 17 Mogadishu districts.30 The mapping exercise, conducted according to the CCCM site verification methodology, did not verify sites hosting less than 50 households, as well as sites consisting solely of ‘fake shelters.’31 These are also referred to as ‘rice huts’ (buush bariis in Somali), meaning shelters that are put together to artificially increase the number of people entitled to humanitarian aid.32
In 2012, the distribution of IDP sites within Mogadishu was completely different, with over 60 % of them situated in Hodan, Wadajir and Dharkenley districts.33 In 2013, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) set up a ‘Mogadishu Relocation Task Force’ with the aim to relocate IDPs living in informal settlements in Mogadishu to other areas on the outskirts of the city, including Dayniile District, and along the Afgoye Corridor.34 In the period 2012-2016, Mogadishu’s IDP population remained relatively stable in numbers but it moved significantly within the city, mainly as a result of forced evictions.35 For further details on this point see section below 2. Evictions in Mogadishu and impact on civilians.
- 26
UNOCHA Somalia, Email exchange, 12, 29 March 2026
- 27
Peace Hub Foundation, Eviction Risk Mapping Report – Benadir, March 2025, url, p. 2
- 28
UNOCHA, Consolidated CCCM and DTM IDP Baseline List, November 2025, n.a. The document was shared with the EUAA. For a recent public mapping, although outdated, see CCCM Cluster Somalia – Verified IDP sites in Mogadishu Dayniile and Mogadishu Khada, December 2024, url
- 29
Crawford, N., at al., The lives and livelihoods of forcibly displaced people in Mogadishu, April 2024, url, p. 10; see also UNHCR and FGS, Internal Displacement Profiling Mogadishu, April 2016, url, pp. 19-21
- 30
UNOCHA, Consolidated CCCM and DTM IDP Baseline List, November 2025, n.a.
- 31
CCCM Cluster – Standard Operating Procedure – Site Verification Methodology, 25 March 2025, url, p. 2
- 32
Bakonyi, J., The Political Economy of Displacement: Rent Seeking, Dispossessions and Precarious Mobility in Somali Cities, April 2021, url, 14; Bakonyi, J., et al., War and city making in Somalia: Property, power and disposable lives, 2019, url, pp. 87-88
- 33
UNHCR and FGS, Internal Displacement Profiling Mogadishu, April 2016, url, p. 22
- 34
Mahad Wasuge et al., Land Matters in Mogadishu, 2017, url, pp. 81-84, 87, 93
- 35
UNHCR and FGS, Internal Displacement Profiling Mogadishu, April 2016, url, p. 22