The threat of violence from new and ongoing conflicts displaced 11 million people inside their own countries in 2014, bringing the total number of internally displaced people (IDPs) worldwide to 38 million, a report has said.
Instability in countries like Syria, where a civil war has been raging for more than four years, often forces IDPs to move around their country more than once to avoid violence.
While the sect has drifted in and out of the international spotlight, its victims driven from their homes have quietly piled up under the radar of state and international officials, leaving ordinary Nigerians to act as a safety net for than 1.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs).
It says: Concerted and effective pressure must be exerted on the Syrian authorities to allow UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations unfettered access to IDPs [internally displaced persons] and others in need throughout the country, including allowing cross-border access to the relevant areas from other countries, as well as across front lines within Syria.
Conflicts in Iraq, South Sudan and Syria forced more than 4.5 million people from their homes last year, fuelling an estimated 15% surge in the total number of IDPs, according to the annual report by the Norwegian Refugee Council NRCC) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), published on Wednesday.
"[The] majority of the IDPs are traumatised," said Yinka Afolabi, humanitarian coordinator at Oxfam Nigeria.
It was also the first time the organisation assumed primary responsibility for those displaced within their own country (IDPs), not just for those who had fled across international borders.
Exact statistics are difficult to compile, in part because IDPs may be cut off from international access and assistance or compelled to go into hiding because of threats to their life or safety.
AFRICA contains half of the world's Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)—those who have fled their homes but continue to live in their own countries.
Sometimes though, as in the Darfur region of Sudan, those very same governments have driven the IDPs from their homes in the first place.An African Union convention on IDPs, signed in the Ugandan capital Kampala on October 23rd, aims to change that.
The Sudanese government, indeed, has not signed the convention and so far shown no inclination to prosecute its own over the killing and rape of IDPs in Darfur.
