Internal refugees decline to 9.1m in East, Central Africa

There were 9.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in East and Central Africa as of December 2008, according to a United Nations report released last week.

This number was 400,000 less than at the end of June 2008, according to the Displaced Populations Report for July-December 2008 released by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

However, because of the fluidity of the situation, the UN Office has advised against too much optimism. “IDPs are sometimes continually moving, either returning home or being uprooted a second time,” OCHA noted.

The number of refugees forced to seek a safe haven outside their homelands as of December stood at 1.8 million, with most of them hosted by Chad, Tanzania and Kenya. Half the IDPs — 4,576,250 — are in Sudan alone, with 2,700,000 of them in the war-torn Darfur region.

The report covers Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

Displacement in the region is triggered mainly by intra-state conflicts and natural disasters such as floods and drought, with 72 per cent of this occurring in the Greater Horn of Africa region, reflecting mainly the combined internal displacement from the strife-related crises in Sudan and Somalia.

Frequently, several of these causes affect a country or region at the same time, creating complex humanitarian emergencies.

Scarcity of resources, limited access to land and inconclusive peace and reconciliation processes create multiple challenges for the process of return, according to the report.

Humanitarian response to both acute and long-term displacement is often hampered by lack of access to the affected people due to ongoing conflict and persistent high insecurity, including targeting of humanitarian workers and assets, the report notes.

Data was obtained from UN agencies, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, non-governmental organisations, the Red Cross, governments and local authorities.

At this time, the 10th anniversary of the UN’s Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, it is clear that more needs to be done to secure more humanitarian and political action and protect displaced people who are increasingly at the forefront of humanitarian tragedies. 

The United Nations estimates that close to 1 per cent of the world’s 6.7 billion people are now displaced within their own countries, forced to flee their homes due to armed conflicts, violence, development projects and natural disasters.