The New Nation - Internet Edition

AS reported in the media recently, armed conflicts and violence displaced more than 26 million people within their own countries in 2007, the highest number in over a decade as recorded by the Norwegian Refugee Council. While there is growing international attention to the plight, there has been no breakthrough in reducing their numbers or improving their situation. The number of such displaced people was 24.5 million in 2006, but that figure continued to grow.

The number of displaced people rose sharply in war-torn Iraq where there were almost 2.5 million victims by year-end as well as in Democratic Republic of Congo with 1.4 million and Somalia with 1 million. In Sudan and Colombia, significant numbers of people were displaced internally - 5.8 million and up to four million respectively. These refugees were also 'too frequently victims of the gravest human rights abuses', facing continuing attacks as well as hunger and disease.

Many national governments in 2007 were still unable to prevent people being forced from their homes, or provide adequate protection and assistance to those who had been displaced. The UN high commissioner for refugees also pointed to the unwillingness of some governments to provide their own uprooted people with adequate protection and assistance. The displaced were among the most vulnerable to rising food and energy prices that have sparked riots and instability in many developing countries.

Many of the displaced people end up among the urban poor, or if they are in rural areas they do not usually have direct access to farming, as remarked by the UN high commissioner for refugees adding 'they are impacted (by rising prices) in their lives, in their suffering, but also by the fact that rising food prices extend poverty, are generating instability and confrontations, and they themselves help to trigger war and conflict.