Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
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INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT A Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2003 World map of internal displacement Countries affected by internal displacement Internal Displacement: A Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2003 Geneva, February 2004 The Global IDP Project The Global IDP Project, established by the Norwegian Refugee Council at the request of the United Nations, monitors conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide. The Geneva-based Project runs an online database providing comprehensive and regularly up- dated information and analysis on internal displacement in over 50 countries. This global and regional overview is based on country profiles featured by the database. For more in-depth country information and analysis, please visit the online database at www.idpproject.org Cover photo: A family internally displaced by ethnic violence in Katanga, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, April 2003 (photo by Greta Zeender, Global IDP Project) Inside cover: World map of internal displacement 2003 Cover design by Damla Süar, Geneva, [email protected] Printed by Nove Impression et Conseil, Route de Champ-Colin 2, 1260 Nyon Published by the Global IDP Project Norwegian Refugee Council 59, Moïse-Duboule 1209 Geneva Switzerland Tel.: +41 22 799 07 00 www.idpproject.org Contents Global Trends and Developments………………………………………………………. 4 Regional Overviews Africa………………………………………………………………………………………. 12 Americas…………………………………………………………………………………… 16 Asia-Pacific………………………………………………………………………………... 20 Europe……………………………………………………………………………………... 26 Middle East………………………………………………………………………………... 30 Global Trends and Developments With nearly 25 million people uprooted address the needs of IDPs; nearly a third of within their own country by conflicts and IDPs are fully or partially ignored by the human rights violations*, internal displace- UN. The UN system has yet to create the ment is one of the great human tragedies of capacity needed for the effective coordina- our time. Yet the global crisis of internal tion of its response to internal displacement. displacement, which affects 52 countries across all continents, has unfolded largely unnoticed by the general public. Interna- Millions of newly displaced people tional public attention continues to focus on refugees, i.e. people who crossed interna- In 2003, more than three million people tional borders after fleeing their homes. In were newly displaced, the majority by civil comparison, internally displaced people wars and inter-communal violence in Africa. (IDPs) have received much less attention, Some 700,000 people were uprooted in the although their number is nearly twice as east of the Democratic Republic of Congo high, and their plight is often even worse (DRC) alone, following a flare-up of vio- than that of refugees. lence in the power vacuum left by the with- drawal of foreign occupation troops from Among the millions of people newly dis- neighbouring countries. Intensified fighting placed in 2003, many were deliberately tar- in Uganda’s civil war forced an equally high geted by their own governments. In several number of people to flee their homes. And cases, the protection of displaced people as Sudan was heading towards a peace was undermined in the context of counter- agreement between the government and the insurgency campaigns intensified under the rebel-controlled south, a new conflict broke guise of the “war on terror”. Others became out in the western Darfur region, displacing victims of attacks by rebel groups or were more than half a million people. Other coun- forced to flee communal violence. tries with major new displacements include Liberia, Colombia, the Central African Re- Little tangible progress was made in 2003 public, the Philippines and Indonesia. with regard to the provision of protection and assistance to internally displaced peo- At the end of 2003, Sudan was the country ple. With few exceptions, national authori- hosting the largest internally displaced ties continued to be unable or unwilling to population, some 4 million people. The De- fully meet their obligation under interna- mocratic Republic of Congo (3 million), tional law to protect and assist people dis- Colombia (2.9 million), Uganda (1.2 mil- placed within their countries. Neither has lion), Iraq (1.1 million) and Burma (up to the international humanitarian community one million) are also among the countries made the necessary resources available to with the highest numbers of internally dis- placed people. * As national authorities often do not properly register internally displaced people on their terri- tory, many of the figures included in this Over- Peace processes raise hope for view are based on estimates by available public sources. Most estimates were reported during the return second half of 2003. In some countries, available figures vary significantly, often due to limited On the positive side, some three million access to internally displaced populations. In people were able to return to their homes most of these instances, a median figure was during 2003, most of them in Angola (1.9 used, calculated on the basis of the highest and million) and Indonesia (500,000). Thus, the lowest available estimates. large number of new displacements in 2003 4 coincided with a similarly high number of Regional developments returns. These figures do not reflect, how- ever, that many returnees faced enormous While all world regions share similar pat- difficulties when resettling or returning to terns of internal displacement, they also their place of origin, including continued show certain distinctive features. serious violations of their human rights, as well as economic destitution. In Africa, which is the continent worst- affected with nearly 13 million IDPs, rebel A growing number of peace processes raised activities and inter-communal violence were hope for an improvement of the IDP situa- key factors in the displacement of civilians; tion in a number of countries during 2003, although in several countries government including in Liberia, Sudan, Burundi, the armies or proxy forces also forced people to DRC, the Balkans, Angola, Sierra Leone, Sri flee. The ongoing peace processes in several Lanka, Indonesia and several other coun- countries raised hopes that the plight of tries. In some countries, however, progress some of Africa’s worst-off internally dis- in the settlement of conflicts was overshad- placed people may come to an end. But al- owed by the outbreak or intensification of though fighting subsided in a number of other crises which led to new displacement. countries, this did not necessarily lead to the This was, for example, the case in Darfur in return of IDPs, nor – in several cases – even western Sudan, in the Ituri province in east- to an improvement in their humanitarian ern DRC, and in Indonesia’s Aceh province. situation. The inclusion of durable solutions In a total of twelve countries, return move- for IDPs in peace agreements will be essen- ments and new displacements took place in tial for the success of these initiatives. parallel. It was widely feared that the conflict in Iraq, Table 1: Number of IDPs (estimates; as of which dominated the internal agenda in end-2003) 2003, would cause the displacement of sev- eral hundred thousand people. This fear, as Region Countries IDPs it turned out, was exaggerated. With some 80,000 people forced to flee, the number of Africa 20 12.7 displacements in connection with the mili- Asia-Pacific 11 3.6 tary intervention by the United States did Americas 4 3.3 not reach such dramatic proportions. In ad- dition, many of those previously displaced Europe 12 3.0 under Saddam Hussein’s regime were able Middle East 5 2.0 to return to their homes. Continued insecu- rity and limited humanitarian access, how- Global 52 24.6 ever, made it difficult to create conditions for durable reintegration. In Latin America, the bloody conflict in Apart from the war in Iraq, no new major Colombia with its complex displacement armed conflict erupted in 2003. But while patterns still accounted for nearly all new international attention remained focus on displacements. The region also continued to Iraq, numerous other conflicts continued struggle to find durable solutions for people around the world – many with far worse uprooted in conflicts that had long ended. In humanitarian consequences. Peru and Guatemala, the return and reinte- gration of the displaced was agreed in the mid-1990s, but these agreements have never been fully implemented. 5 Military campaigns launched by govern- and many of them are thought to have partly ments to quash insurgencies were a major or fully integrated into their new places of cause of new displacement in the Asia- residence. For others, there is little prospect Pacific region, notably in Indonesia, Nepal of return as long as the region’s entrenched and the Philippines. Return movements took conflicts are not settled. In Iraq, the demise place as well, particularly in Afghanistan, of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 created Indonesia and Sri Lanka, albeit at a much opportunities for the return of the internally slower pace than in the previous year. Lack displaced, but ethnic tensions and the unsta- of assistance and livelihood opportunities; ble security situation prevented large-scale land and property disputes; continued hostil- return movements. ity from local populations; and continued fighting meant that many IDPs preferred to wait before returning, or opted to resettle in Displacement caused by govern- their