allAfrica.com: East Africa: Over 11 Million People Displaced in Central And East Africa, UN Reports
18 May 2009
Armed conflict and natural disasters in Central and East Africa continue to drive an increasing number of persons from their homes, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported today.
The combined number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees in 16 countries in the area exceeds 11 million, up from 10.9 million in December 2008, according to data compiled by OCHA's regional office.
The report comes amid a year-long, worldwide campaign by the UN's humanitarian wing to raise global awareness of what it calls a widespread "displacement crisis."
It also comes after OCHA announced last week that only 27 per cent of the funds needed to support relief efforts in Central and East Africa have been donated.
Statistics compiled in the Displaced Populations Report published by OCHA Regional Office for Central and East Africa show that at the end of March 2009, 10 countries reported a combined total of over 9.1 million IDPs. They are Burundi, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.
The DRC, Somalia and Sudan continue to be the countries with the largest IDP populations. Sudan has over 4 million IDPs, while DRC and Somalia have over 1.3 million IDPs each, OCHA said.
Sixteen countries in the region reported a combined total of nearly 1.9 million refugees at the end of March 2009. The refugee hosting countries are Burundi, Cameroon, CAR, Chad, Djibouti, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Chad, Kenya, Sudan and Tanzania continue to have the largest number of refugees in the region, with each country hosting over 250,000 refugees at the end of March 2009.
OCHA said that among the causes of the displacement were repeated attacks by the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) on civilians in north-eastern DRC and renewed fighting in the eastern North Kivu province related to the joint DRC-Rwanda military operation in January and February against armed rebel groups.
Also, ongoing hostilities in Somalia have resulted in an influx of refugees to north-eastern Kenya, where the three camps in the Dadaab complex are congested with a population of some 258,000 refugees - or nearly three times their original capacity - as of March 2009.
In addition to conflicts, displacement is also triggered by natural disasters such as floods and droughts, creating large in-country and cross-border population movements, OCHA said.
Lack of access to displaced people due to insecurity and targeting of humanitarian workers is an ongoing challenge to those who provide aid in countries such as CAR, Chad, DRC, Somalia, and the Darfur region of Sudan, the Office added.
Last week OCHA reported that some 1.4 million had been contributed to its special appeal, launched in November of last year, to raise almost $5.3 million to respond to crises in Africa.
The awareness campaign, organized by OCHA with the support of its partners, was launched in December 2008 on the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
UNHCR - Sri Lanka: UNHCR struggling to provide for tens of thousands of newly displaced
This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 18 May 2009, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
It is now estimated that 65,000 people have left the former fighting zone in north-east Sri Lanka, which brings the total who have fled the fighting in the last several months to 265,000.
This latest massive influx of people, who have endured extreme conditions, will put an even greater strain on the transit and IDP sites that are already buckling under the pressure of the existing IDP population.
UNHCR plans to put up an additional 10,000 emergency shelters to accommodate the tens of thousands who have left the combat zone and who are expected to arrive seeking shelter in coming days.
For the time being, our existing shelter and relief items are sufficient to respond to the IDPs immediate needs but stocks are running low and will need to replenish them soon.
We are reiterating our request to the government to allocate more land for the construction of emergency shelter, water and sanitation facilities, as well as to provide public buildings in Vavuniya, Jaffna, Mannar and Kilinochchi in order to accommodate arriving IDPs.
UNHCR is calling on the government to take immediate steps to improve conditions at the 42 existing sites hosting the IDPs and ensure adequate care and maintenance for the population of concern.
Our access to the Vavuniya sites has been greatly curtailed over the past few days and this affects our ability to monitor and distribute aid to the displaced. We hope this ends quickly.
Story date: 18 May 2009
UNHCR Briefing Notes
Refugees' plight worsens in searing heat - Asia, World - The Independent100F temperatures confront masses who have fled the Swat Valley conflict
By Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich in Jalala
Saturday, 16 May 2009
AP
Pakistani children displaced by the military's battle against the Taliban in the Swat Valley gather for a meal at the Jalozai refugee camp on the outskirts of Peshawar
At the height of the bright white midday burn-out, the refugees from the hills were hiding from the Jalala sun.
They had hung up some tarpaulins at the base of an electricity pylon and they sat there – three families in all – covering their heads and wafting themselves hopelessly with bamboo fans. In this corner of the North-West Frontier Province, the temperature was at least 100F (38C), and the refugees looked ready to expire.
"The tent is so hot. If you're inside the tent during the day you are very brave," said Gul Mohammed, a shopkeeper from Rahimabad in the Swat Valley. "We can only go inside our tent in the evening, and even then it's full of mosquitoes. That's why we are here, hiding under these tarpaulins."
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* Tigers prepare for last stand as thousands flee
The hundreds of thousands of refugees now pouring out of the mountainous Swat are used to cooler climes and clean air – but they are running straight into the perilous embrace of Pakistan's sweltering summer. Aid officials warn that the soaring temperatures are already taking a merciless toll on the refugees. Children in particular are falling victim to heat stroke and dehydration. And in such cramped conditions and with poor sanitation and little water, the heat makes it more likely that diseases will spread.
"What I'm worried about is the heat," said Professor Isa Khan, head of the Rehman Welfare Foundation, who heads an emergency clinic at the Jalala refugee camp, two hours north-west of Islamabad. "It's 100 degrees today. When it soars to 106 in the next couple of days there will be a very serious situation – heat strokes, dehydration and the spread of diseases such as cholera and hepatitis. The first day I arrived here two women died from heat stroke."
The problem, said Dr Khan, was that there was simply no way to keep people cool. The tents housing about 8,000 people had no access to electricity to power fans, even if there were any fans to hand out. Nor is there any means of making ice. "I've been requesting an emergency tent with air conditioning," added Dr Khan. "We have no way of immediately cooling someone."
In breezeless, blistering conditions there was literally nowhere to avoid the heat. Two heavily bearded brothers, Zafar and Shaukat Ali, from the city of Mingora, were both sweating heavily as they walked through the dusty camp. "It's not great here," said Zafar, a rickshaw driver. "There's no way to escape the heat, it's everywhere. It's hot inside the tent, it's hot outside of the tent. Even the water is hot."
On a visit to nearby Yar Hussain, Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters: "People are living in very harsh conditions under the sun – [the] very hot sun."
Experts say the impact of the high temperatures amid the closely pitched tents, bisected by ditches of filthy, stinking water, will only worsen as more people come to the camps. "People are living in hot, cramped conditions with limited water and food," said Maria Luiza Galer, a health official with the British charity, Merlin. "They just keep arriving, adding to the already over-crowded camps. It is a race against time to prevent an outbreak."
Already overstretched by the 900,000 people estimated by the UN to have fled from Swat and the surrounding areas of Buner and Lower Dir in the past three weeks, officials are bracing themselves for more. Yesterday thousands of refugees streamed from Swat after the military temporarily lifted a curfew, allowing residents to escape so that it can engage the militants in "street-to-street fighting".
Witnesses told how a column of cars, trucks and horse-drawn carts loaded up with people and possessions poured from Mingora. On the way they had to pass burnt-out vehicles that had not made it. The army claimed that it had received reports that some of the Taliban fighters they have been battling were shaving their beards and cutting their hair and trying to escape the conflict among the exodus of refugees.
The majority of the refugees flooding from the mountains are staying with members of their extended families or else in rented rooms, but about 80,000 people have no alternative but the 20-odd camps, most of them around the city of Mardan.
Saeed Haider Ali, of World Vision, said that in addition to the physical health problems, the heat also caused psychological issues. "It's ominous. The heat is unbearable," he said. "These people come from much cooler areas and their skin is very sensitive."
Aid officials say they are scrambling to provide fans for the tents, something that may ease the situation just a little. In the meantime, the refugees are going to continue to burn. "Look at these tents and the place where they are set up. Can someone from a cool region live here? There are no fans, no cold water, nothing," Maryam Bibim, a mother of four who had recently arrived at Yar Hussain, told Reuters. "Do you want our children to die of heat stroke? Even at night my kids can't sleep because of the heat. They cry but what can I do?"
UNHCR - Number of newly displaced in Pakistan nears 700,000UNHCR News Stories
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 13 (UNHCR) – The number of people who have fled the fighting in northwest Pakistan this month and been registered or recorded by authorities reached 670,906 on Wednesday, up from just over half a million the day before.
The majority of those registered by Pakistani authorities with the assistance of UNHCR are staying in the homes of friends and relatives or camping out in the open; a fraction of the total – 79,842 – are now living in camps.
Together with more than 550,000 registered displaced people in the North West Frontier Province and some 21,000 in the capital Islamabad and urban areas of the Punjab, the continuing exodus brings to 1,248,715 the total number of people displaced in Pakistan since August, 2008.
UNHCR believes the total number of people who have fled the fighting in recent weeks could be much higher, since many of those fleeing the fighting between government forces and militants have not yet registered with authorities.
UN High Commissioner António Guterres has called urgently on countries around the world to come to the aid of the growing number of displaced. "This is a huge and rapidly unfolding emergency, which is going to require considerable resources beyond those that currently exist in the region," he said earlier this week.
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