Two thirds of the refugees are Hindu and the remainder Christian. Almost all are from the conflict-affected areas of Sri Lanka's Northern and Eastern provinces. Prior to fleeing to India in the 1980s or 1990s most refugee families were agricultural…
Some of the most disadvantaged refugees in Egypt are former Sudanese students who remained in Egypt when the democratically-elected Sudanese government was overthrown in 1989. A small number of them managed to settle in the West but the majority remained…
Young people in conflict-torn states - including genocide survivors in Rwanda, AIDS-ravaged families in Uganda and ex-child combatants in West Africa - have heavy responsibilities thrust upon them. Whilst they hope for a bright future - a good job, a…
The proliferation of internal conflicts in the 1990s gave rise to new interest in the phenomenon of internal displacement. At the beginning of the new millennium, an estimated 25 million people were internally displaced as a result of armed conflict…
The mission of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) is "to enhance UNDP's efforts for sustainable development, working with partners to reduce the incidence and impact of disasters and violent conflicts, and to establish the solid foundations for…
Well-informed policy and programme decisions are based on high-quality research. Research in the forced migration field is made difficult by the prevalence of highly mobile and continuously shifting populations in insecure settings. Urban, self-settled and undocumented populations often have an…
Because addressing internal displacement is primarily a duty of governments, promoting national responsibility and accountability is essential. This is no less true in Latin America, where there are some 3.3 million IDPs. Most are found in Colombia in conditions of…
In November 2003 Thomas Nimley Yaya, chairman of the Liberian rebel group MODEL, announced that his soldiers would disarm on one condition: they wanted vocational training in exchange for their guns. In their war-torn country neither money nor food could…
By the end of 2003 there were nearly 25 million people displaced within their own countries by conflicts and human rights violations. During the year, some three million people were forced out of their homes in 2003; a similarly high…
Australians Against Racism (www.australiansagainstracism.org) has published a book bringing together the best refugee stories submitted for an essay competition which ran in primary and secondary schools around Australia. The 37 stories in the collection provide extraordinary accounts written by young…