Category Archives: Internally displaced people

Gaza diary, part 34: ‘I just wish to go back to spending a day in bed, reading’

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Ziad, a 35-year-old Palestinian, describes the extra hardship that winter rain brings and a friend reminisces about a cappuccino

8am
I have never been a fan of the sun nor the sunny weather. I am a lover of the rain, winter and tree leaves falling. I remember at high school – my English language teacher would always ask me and other students during the recess to stand in the sun. “Hug the sun, feel its warmth. It is full of vitamin D.” I did what she asked but never liked it.

On the other hand, this teacher opened the door for me to learn about literature, which I loved. In class, we would read summarised classics like Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice and A Tale of Two Cities.

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‘Families want to die together’: relatives count the cost of Gaza airstrikes

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As Israeli missiles rain down on crowded apartment blocks, survivors are left numb as entire family groups are wiped out

The first call informing Fares Alghoul that a relative’s home had been hit by an Israeli airstrike arrived late on a Friday. The internet in Gaza was cut only moments later, forcing him to wait 12 hours to learn the names of the 18 dead. He would have to wait even longer for the confirmation that a further 18 family members stuck under the rubble had also been killed, bringing his family’s death toll to 36.

As a journalist, Alghoul has covered all Gaza’s previous wars but now lives in Canada, where he has had to watch from a distance as generations of his family are wiped out.

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Lack of clean drinking water for 95% of people in Gaza threatens health crisis

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Polluted water supplies and salty groundwater are making people ill, with UN warning of threat of child deaths from dehydration

Palestinians who fled to southern Gaza, after warnings from Israel to leave their homes, are standing in line for hours to get contaminated water they believe is making them ill.

Long queues of people waiting to fill jerry cans are now ubiquitous across the territory as water becomes increasingly scarce, a result of restrictions on water and power imposed by Israel.

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War crimes surge in Burkina Faso, the world’s ‘most neglected crisis’

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Villagers increasingly caught up in army crackdown on Islamist militants, with both sides accused of mass killings of civilians

Civilians in Burkina Faso are being punished by the “total war” the government is waging against Islamist militant groups, with both sides accused of war crimes.

The military has been accused of targeting the Fulani ethnic group, while jihadists have sought retribution against villagers they believe support the government.

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Burkina Faso is the world’s ‘most neglected crisis’ as focus remains on Ukraine

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Chronic emergencies in Africa are being ignored while Ukraine dominates headlines and receives more funding, says NGO

The displacement of 2 million people in Burkina Faso has been named the world’s most neglected crisis, while the world’s attention and aid has been focused on Ukraine, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

Burkina Faso has endured five years of conflict with militias – who have attacked water sources and forced school closures – now controlling up to 40% of the country’s territory.

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Conflict and climate disasters combine to create record rise in displaced people

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War in Ukraine and Pakistan’s ‘monsoon on steroids’ among events driving surge on ‘scale never seen before’ as 71m people displaced

The number of people around the world who were forced to flee their homes leapt by a fifth last year, as a “perfect storm” of Russia’s assault on Ukraine and climate disasters brought displacement on an unprecedented scale.

By the end of 2022 the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) – those forced from their homes but remaining within their country of residence – reached 71 million, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), up from 59.1 million in 2021.

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Sudan’s neighbours have little to offer refugees, warns UN

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Thousands of Sudanese are crossing borders into countries already severely stressed by drought, conflicts and food insecurity, say UN officials

The UN is in a race against time to get food supplies to Sudanese refugees crossing the border into Chad before the rainy season begins, as neighbouring countries struggle to cope with the numbers of people fleeing the civil war.

More than 110,000 people are now estimated to have crossed into other countries as patchy ceasefires fail to stop deadly clashes between Sudanese army troops and a paramilitary rival that have killed hundreds and forced more than 330,000 from their homes.

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Sudanese army blocks Britons from boarding last rescue flights

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Nearly 1,900 have been evacuated, says UK government, but final flight has yet to leave Khartoum

Britons are feared to have been stranded in Sudan following reports that the country’s armed forces had prevented a number of people from reaching the last rescue flights out of the war-torn country on Saturday.

On Saturday night, it was announced that 1,888 people on 21 flights have been evacuated from Sudan – the vast majority of them British nationals and their dependents – but the last flight was yet to leave despite being scheduled to depart at 6pm.

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Sudan street battles threaten fragile ceasefire as Turkish plane shot

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Concerns truce agreement may not hold despite three-day extension as unrest continues

Street battles and gunfire threaten what remains of a fragile ceasefire in Sudan, now hanging by a thread despite a three-day extension of the truce agreement, as a Turkish evacuation plane was shot at as it attempted to land.

The Sudanese Armed Forces, loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, traded blame for the incident at the Wadi Seidna airbase, 12.5 miles (20km) north of Khartoum on the western bank of the Nile

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‘Trail of war crimes’ left by DRC rebel group as recent attacks leave 300,000 displaced

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After a year of murder, rape, disease and looting, aid workers ask the international community: ‘Where the hell have you been?’

More than 300,000 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have had to abandon their homes because of fighting between the M23 rebel group and the government last month.

According to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, more than 800,000 people have now been displaced by the conflict since last March, and there is a humanitarian crisis that regional and international powers have allowed to fester.

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Tens of thousands of refugees flee from Somaliland clashes

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Somalis arrive in Ethiopia from disputed town of Las Anod, where at least 82 people have died in fighting

More than 60,000 Somali refugees have fled to Ethiopia after an escalation in fighting in the town of Las Anod, in the Sool region, where tensions between local people and the governing Somaliland authorities have been building for weeks.

The UN said the refugees had arrived in part of Ethiopia that had been badly hit by drought after five consecutive failed rains, and that many people were sleeping in the open, or sheltering in schools and other public buildings.

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Health officials warn of major outbreaks of disease after severe floods in Pakistan

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Diarrhoea and malaria cases spread, with risk of dysentery and cholera, as millions of displaced people forced to drink flood water

Health officials have warned of large-scale outbreaks of disease in Pakistan after severe flooding displaced millions of people.

A rise in cases of diarrhoea and malaria has been reported after months of heavy rains left people stranded and without access to clean water.

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Yemen’s warring parties agree to extend ceasefire by a further two months

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The truce will bring some relief to a country exhausted by war and famine, but critics say the Houthis will use the peace to regroup

The UN has announced that the warring sides in Yemen have agreed to extend the current ceasefire for a further two months.

Late on Tuesday the government and the Houthi rebels committed to intensify efforts on negotiations, said Hans Grundberg, special envoy for the country.

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‘Huge spike’ in global conflict caused record number of displacements in 2021

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Those fleeing combat were internally displaced 14.4m times, with biggest toll in sub-Saharan Africa, report reveals

Conflict and violence forced people from their homes a record number of times last year, a report has found, with sub-Saharan Africa bearing the brunt of mass internal displacement caused by “huge spikes” in fighting.

People fleeing violence were internally displaced 14.4m times in 2021, an increase of 4.6m on 2020, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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Women face chronic violence in Syria’s ‘widow camps’, report warns

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Conditions drastically worse than in general camps, with some women forced to engage in ‘survival sex’, says World Vision

Women and children living in some of the hardest-to-reach camps in north-west Syria face chronic and high levels of violence and depression, with some women forced to engage in “survival sex”, a new report has revealed.

Children in so-called “widow camps” have been found to be severely neglected, abused and forced to work while mothers are at “breaking point” psychologically. More than 80% of women say they do not have adequate healthcare and 95% expressed feelings of hopelessness.

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Tigray has been the scene of ‘ethnic cleansing’, say human rights groups

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Human Rights Watch-Amnesty report accuses Ethiopian paramilitaries of war crimes and crimes against humanity

Ethiopian paramilitaries have carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes using threats, killings and sexual violence, according to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

The rights groups accuse officials and paramilitaries from the neighbouring Amhara region of war crimes and crimes against humanity in western Tigray, in northern Ethiopia.

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‘We took our children and ran’: thousands displaced as Senegal’s 40-year war crosses border

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More than 6,ooo people have left their homes as renewed violence in the Casamance region spills into the Gambia

It was late morning when the bullets burst through the corrugated roof of Maimouna Kujabee’s farmhouse. First, she hit the ground. Then she took off, running from her village in Ziguinchor, in Senegal’s Casamance region, as fast as her children could manage.

Through fields and forest, with only the clothes on her back, Kujabee did not stop until she reached Bajagar, in the Gambia, about a mile north of the border. “The sun was hot. I ran until my sandals were cut up,” says Kujabee.

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Somalis in crowded camps on ‘brink of death’ as drought worsens

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UN warns of looming catastrophe as hundreds of thousands more arrive at settlements that do not have enough food or water

Somalia’s displacement camps are coming under intense pressure with more than 300,000 people leaving their homes in search of food and water so far this year as the country experiences its worst drought in decades.

People have been walking miles to camps, already home to those escaping the country’s protracted violence, after three consecutive failed rainy seasons since October 2020 that have decimated crops and livestock. Somalia has more than 2,400 such settlements, which already lack resources.

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‘Anything to stop the massacres’: peace still eludes DRC as armed groups proliferate

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After years of conflict between the DR Congo’s ineffective army, rebel forces and local militias, can Uganda’s entry into the war bring peace?

For the past three months, Ugandan forces have been bombarding Islamist rebels in its border region with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The offensive, in the Rwenzori mountain range that straddles both countries, has forced many Congolese to leave their homes and move to the cities for shelter.

Sarah Kasanga* is one. The Allied Democratic Force (ADF) militia stormed Kalingathe, her village north of Beni, in December 2019. People were made to lie on the floor while rebels searched homes for food, pots, money or clothes.

DRC soldiers overlook Virunga national park at a military base on the outskirts of Beni

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In limbo: the refugees left on the Belarusian-Polish border – a photo essay

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Offered a route into Europe by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, thousands of asylum seekers are now stranded on the EU’s frontier

By Lorenzo Tondo. Photographs by Alessio Mamo

On 13 August last year, a villager in Ostrówka, in the east of central Poland, posted two pictures on Facebook featuring groups of men, women and children walking through the cornfields with bags on their backs.

They were families from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraqi Kurdistan, and they were among the first asylum seekers to enter the country from Belarus. The post was accompanied by the following short text: “In the heat of day through wheat, at night through corn, they sneak through, they wander, just to get to the west. Great politics and slight refugees leave their print on the fields near Ostrówka.”

The makeshift shelter of a Syrian family with small children in the forest near Narewka, Poland

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