It is estimated that there are over 600,000 IDPs in Sri Lanka, of whom 270,000 have been displaced in the recent military campaign between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the Northern…
International interest in refugees and asylum issues in recent years has largely focused on populations on the move – either on the arrival of individuals claiming asylum in Western states or on the challenge of delivering humanitarian assistance to displaced…
The plight of over 4 million people displaced by the conflict in Colombia fits into the definition of a protracted situation regarding numbers, duration, chronic character and lack of adequate response by local governments and the international community. However, the…
My name is Abebe Feyissa Demo and I was born in Addis Ababa in 1960. Before I had to leave my homeland, I was studying in the University of Addis Ababa’s Department of Psychology. In 1991 I fled to escape…
The Listening Project stems from the belief that those who work across borders in humanitarian aid, development assistance, peacebuilding, environmental conservation and human rights can learn a great deal by listening to the analyses and judgments of local people as…
The largest wave of displacement in Uganda occurred in 1995-96, when the government forced civilians in northern Uganda into so-called ‘protected villages’ using mortars and helicopter gunships in the process. The ‘protected villages’ were later turned into IDP camps[1] which…
Uganda’s long and brutal civil war resulted in the internal displacement of nearly 1.6 million civilians, of whom an estimated 300,000 to 600,000 fled not to one of the country’s many IDP camps but to urban destinations. In July and…
Yemen shares characteristics with many other countries hosting urban refugees: lack of durable solutions; challenges of quantifying populations; a host government evading Convention responsibilities; hostility from a once-welcoming host community; political interference in choice of implementing partners; and, most fundamentally,…
Since the late 1990s, Colombia’s major cities have been places where people become displaced between communes and quarters of the cities. The city continues to receive people displaced from the countryside but cannot be considered a safe refuge for them.…
Those are the words of a UNHCR staff member in the Syrian capital of Damascus, referring to the challenge of responding to the massive Iraqi refugee exodus that has taken place since 2006. UNHCR is familiar with the demands of…