GENEVA - The international Red Cross on Thursday warned that the majority of the world's 26 million displaced people were often neglected because they found refuge with local communities instead of in camps.
"The focus on camps means that what happens to the majority of displaced people -- those who seek refuge with host communities -- is often ignored," International Committee of the Red Cross chief Jakob Kellenberger said.
October 2009 has begun with the New York Times reporting that "the president, vice president and an array of cabinet secretaries, intelligence chiefs, generals, diplomats and advisers gathered in a windowless basement room of the White House for three hours on Wednesday to chart a new course in Afghanistan."
CALAIS, France - French riot police on Tuesday moved Afghan men and youths out of a makeshift camp known as "the Jungle" which is used as a base to launch risky attempts to get across the Channel to Britain.
A dawn operation was launched to evacuate the camp on a patch of sandy scrubland in the Channel port of Calais, with police arresting 278 migrants. The migrants gathered behind banners with slogans pleading with French authorities for shelter and protection.
Living by a palm-fringed golden beach on the edge of the Indian Ocean, Suganthinhi Thesamanikam considers herself lucky to be alive after living through the hell of war.
Caught between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan army, she dodged bullets and shells for two years before ending up on the sandy littoral where the rebel leadership was routed in May, in a bloody ending to a 25-year-old civil war. Three of her cousins were killed during the last days of heavy aerial bombardment.
NAIROBI - Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing unrest are now living in camps that Oxfam said on Thursday were horrifically overcrowded and unfit for humans.
Two years of Islamist insurgency have created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa nation, with one million internally displaced people and thousands more fleeing across borders to Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.
Oxfam said poor sanitation and little access to basic services such as water and medicine have created a public health emergency in camps.
An unprecedented human drama is unfolding in Pakistan and yet few in the wider world are paying attention. Why?
Thousands of Iraqi refugees resettled in the U.S. are living in poverty and need additional federal aid to survive the nation's economic crisis, according to a new report by an international aid agency.
The number of people internally displaced within their own countries has reached a historical high of more than 28 million, the UN's refugee agency said today, as conflicts in Pakistan's Swat valley and Sri Lanka compound a growing global problem.
At the end of last year the total number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution around the world stood at 42 million, including 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million people uprooted within their own countries, according to UNHCR's annual Global Trends report, which was released this afternoon.
In Pakistan's Swabi district, a bumpy road leads to Shah Mansoor, a small village surrounded by farmland. Just outside the village, uniform size tents are set up in hundreds of rows. The sun bores down on the Shah Mansoor camp which has become a temporary home to thousands of displaced Pakistanis from the Swat area. In the stifling heat, the camp's residents sit idly, day after day, uncertain about their future. They spoke with heated certainty, though, about their grievances.
As soon as we stepped out of the car, men and children approached us.
ISLAMABAD -- Shortly after arriving in Pakistan, one week ago, we met a weaver and his extended family, numbering 76 in all, who had been forcibly displaced from their homes in Fathepur, a small village in the Swat Valley.
