Africa has 11 million displaced people
admin October 16th, 2009
According to a report published yesterday on IRIN, Africa hosts at least 11 million of the world’s 25 million conflict-affected internally displaced people (IDPs) and millions more are displaced annually by natural disasters.
For example, Sudan has an estimated 4-5 million IDPs, thanks to the recent civil war in the south, and violence in Darfur and the east.
And at the peak of Uganda’s northern conflict, at least 1.8 million people were displaced, although most have now returned home. But there are still nearly 500,000 displaced people there, down from 710,000 earlier in the year.
Other highlights (if you can call them that) of this report:
• 1.3 million displaced by violence in Somalia
• 2 million displaced in the Eastern DRC by the violence and civil war there
• 100,000 displaced in the Central African Republic
• 168,000 displaced in Chad
Overall, it’s a terrifying number and, as the report points out, IDPs do not have the same rights as refugees (who have crossed international boundaries) and this makes their situation worse and the problem much harder for aid and UN agencies to deal with.
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