Internally Displaced People All Over the World

The number of internally displaced people or IDPs are growing. Increasingly, their plight is demanding international attention.

Internally Displaced People All Over the World Host: Rosala’s just one of 25 million people internally displaced because of conflict in over 50 countries around the world. Citizens, fleeing from civil wars or ethnic cleansing or other conflicts within the borders of their own countries, forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods, losing their possessions, becoming separated from family and friends. These people are often denied even basic necessities. They are among the poorest, most vulnerable and most forgotten people in the world. While national governments are responsible for assisting and protecting displaced people, at times they’re unable or unwilling to do so. At times they might even be responsible for their displacement. The numbers of internally displaced people or IDPs are growing. Increasingly their plight is demanding international attention. Jan Egeland: Too much attention goes to one or two very political conflicts and all the others are forgotten. When there is an international war and when there are international refugees there is a lot of attention, always. When there is an internal ongoing problem, they tend to be forgotten. But we should remember these people suffer more as civilians than in most wars. The internal displaced are the forgotten and neglected people in the forgotten and neglected emergencies around the world. Neill Wright: Displacement from your land from your home is distressing for somebody displaced ten miles or to another country. The circumstances they find themselves in are very much the same. The international legal support that they receive is different and that refugees do have rights under international law that IDPs do not enjoy. They are incredibly vulnerable and they’ve lost a lot of their own self-confidence, they’ve lost a lot of their own possessions. They are dependent on others to help them and they are quite often having to live in appalling conditions. Host: Sri Lanka, a holiday destination and tropical paradise. But away from the tourist beaches, to the North and East of the country, Sri Lanka has been torn apart by a complex and bloody civil war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam known as the LTTE. The roots of the conflict go back to attempts by the Singhalese-dominated government in 1956 to check what they saw as the excessive influence of the Tamils during the colonial era. Over the years, the failure of Tamil political parties to reach a peaceful settlement with the Singhalese majority led to demands for their own independent, Tamil state and a militant movement, the Tamil Tigers dedicated to achieving this goal. Over sixty thousand people have been killed and over eight hundred thousand forced to flee their homes during the conflict. A cease-fire was finally agreed two years ago and the fighting stopped. Yet a Sri Lanka no longer at war, is not yet a country at peace. And whilst 360,000 people have returned, more than half the families displaced by the fighting are still unable to return home because of the uncertainties of the situation. Peace talks stalled a year ago. In the last couple of weeks, there have been negotiations about how to restart the peace discussions. Now, at least, there’s hope that the talks will continue and the stalemate end. But it’s a complex situation the newly elected coalition government may need support from political parties who oppose any federal solution to the conflict. Confusing the negotiations yet further. In the meantime, what now happens to Sri Lanka’s displaced people? Neill Wright: Most Sri Lankans they have a very, very strong family and personal tie to their home village and they deserve a lot of support to help them reintegrate, to build over many years a viable future for them, and Sri Lanka is still in that phase of transition after the conflict stopped on 22 February 2002, so there’s still a lot of work to do.