Thursday, March 24, 2011

Violence displaces 27.5 million people found

The number of people around the world forcibly displaced within their country due to conflict or violence has increased to 27.5 million, the highest figure in the last decade, according to a new report released Wednesday. Center the text of the Internal Displacement Monitoring, based in Geneva and established in 1998 by the Norwegian Refugee Council at the request of the UN, said that about three million people in 20 countries were newly displaced by conflict or violence 2010, including 1.2 million in Africa.

Elisabeth Rasmusson, NRC's general secretary, said "the figure in the last 10 years is steadily increasing" and the influx continued into this year. In Ivory Coast, "civilians are paying a heavy price for the political deadlock" caused by Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to hand over power to Alassane Ouattara, who has already received international recognition for his victory in the presidential elections of 28 November.

"More than 500,000 people have been displaced internally and more are fleeing now," Rasmusson said during a press conference at the International Institute for Peace in the submission of the report. Although the number of people displaced within their countries, known as IDP for short in English, has increased from about 17 million in 1997 to 27,500,000 last year, the report said the number of refugees "fleeing to another country "has fluctuated between 13 million and 16 million during the same period.

According to the text, more than half of the IDPs in the world in 2010 were in five countries: Colombia with between 3.5 million and 5.2 million, Sudan with between 4.5 million and 5.2 million, Iraq with about 2.8 million, Congo approximately 1.7 million, and Somalia with about 1.5 million.

Pakistan stood a little behind with 980 thousand. Rasmusson said that in the last 10 years significant progress has been made to understand and respond to IDPs whose humanitarian and protection needs are allegedly covered by their own governments. But he noted that often only receive assistance from humanitarian agencies or none.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN special representative for children in armed conflict, said that 12.2 million IDPs in 2010 were infants. Increasingly, Rasmusson said, the new movements are also caused by violence linked to drug trafficking and organized crime, as in Colombia and Mexico. "It is worth noting that in Mexico, the number of trips in 2010 is greater than the number of newly displaced people in Afghanistan during the same period, "he said.

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