About 9.1 million people in Central and Eastern Africa have been displaced as of December, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.
The number of refugees forced to seek haven outside their homelands as of December stood at 1.8 million, with most of them hosted by Chad, Tanzania and Kenya, according to the report released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Half of the displaced persons, 4,576,250, are in Sudan, with 2,700,000 of them in the war-torn Darfur region, the report said.
Displacement in the region has been triggered mainly by intra-state conflicts and natural disasters such as floods and drought, with 72 percent in the Greater Horn of Africa region largely because of strife-related crises in Sudan and Somalia.
Scarcity of resources, limited access to land and inconclusive peace and reconciliation processes create multiple challenges for the process of returning the displaced, according to the report.
Humanitarian responses to both acute and long-term displacement are often hampered by a lack of access to the affected people due to ongoing conflicts and persistent threats, including the targeting of humanitarian workers and assets, the report noted.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes on Dec. 18 launched a global campaign to raise awareness about the plight of the displaced. The campaign's focus in 2009 will be on preventing displacement and finding solutions to the problem.
Source:Xinhua
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