Global Overview; People internally displaced by conflict ad violence, the world in 2011

19 April 2012

Photos: ActionPress/Virot
Text : Celhia de Lavarene

For the last 14 years the Norwegian Refugees Council’s International Displacing Monitoring Centre has been monitored internal displacement resulting from conflict and violence across the world.

Today in Geneva the report for 2011 was released in presence of António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Elisabeth Rasmussen, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Secretary General Elisabeth Rasmussen.

According to the report: - Global Overview; People internally displaced by conflict ad violence, the world in 2011 was an unsafe place for millions of people. From criminal violence including attacks by armed groups in sub-Saharan Africa or by drug cartels in Latin America, to armed clashes such as those associated with the conflict in Cote d’Ivoire or the uprising across the Arab world: such events caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

The circumstances of people’s displacement and their long-term prospects were as divers as the situation of violence were as divers as the situations of violence or conflict which had forced them to flee, the report says.

However, despite these challenges there have also been some positive develop in 2011. Although Africa still was the region with the largest number of the IDPs in the 2011 the total number there continued to follow a downward trend which begun had begun as early as in 2004.