27 May 2010
As of May 2010, at least 4.9 million people are internally displaced in Darfur, the Greater Khartoum area, South Kordofan and the ten States of Southern Sudan, with unknown numbers of internally displaced people in the other northern and eastern States. They make up one of the two largest internally displaced populations in the world, alongside that of Colombia. Some people have been displaced for more than two decades, while others were newly displaced in 2009 and 2010.
In Southern Sudan over 390,000 people were newly displaced in 2009, twice as many as in 2008, and another 60,000 during the first four months of 2010. The increase in new displacement is a consequence of heightened inter and intra-tribal violence, attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and conflicts between pastoralist communities; poor governance, the proliferation of firearms and land disputes between returning IDPs, refugees and residents, all exacerbated by drought and food shortages. A new feature of the violence in 2009 was the deliberate targeting of women and children, who were often shot at water points, in the fields or while collecting firewood.(…)
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