Displacement in Darfur Since UNAMID Assumed Its Mandate (January 1, 2008)

January 2011

Displacement in Darfur Since UNAMID Assumed Its Mandate (January 1, 2008):

[April 6, 2012 UPDATE: while the UN is not providing figures as readily as in the past, the data provided and the estimates of professionals working in Darfur in a range of capacities, strongly suggest that more than 100,000 were displaced in Darfur in 2011, mainly in Khor Abeche and Shangil Tobaya, where one especially well-informed regional source estimates that 80,000 were displaced.]

For the sheer scale of what is occurring in Darfur, perhaps our best guide is human displacement, which has been reported annually in crude but fairly effective fashion:

[1] Displacement, typically the direct consequence of violence, is ongoing and has driven some 3 million Darfuris from their homes and lands over the past eight years; they languish either as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), as refugees in Chad and Central African Republic, or as dependents within host families. This large-scale displacement proceeds at a rate that far exceeds returns or resettlements by those who have previously been displaced, despite claims by Charpentier that would suggest otherwise:

(a) The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 317,000 people were newly displaced in 2008 (up from 300,000 in 2007);

(b) The figure for 2009 seems less certain; the Canadian “Peace Operations Monitor” found evidence that suggested “over 214,000 people were newly displaced between January and June [2009] alone.” Given the reports of violent displacement that followed June 2009, a total for the year of 250,000 seems conservative; (http://pom.peacebuild.ca/SudanRelief.shtml )

(c) Internal displacement for 2010 is still being calculated, but as of the end of November, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated that “268,000 [Darfuris were] newly displaced in 2010.” This will surely rise, as the OCHA Sudan Bulletin (January 7 13, 2011) reports that the “overall number of people displaced during the December 2010 fighting in the area of Khor Abeche stands at 43,000.”

(d) These figures only partially capture human displacement in Eastern Jebel Marra, which has endured a yearlong humanitarian blockade and relentless military assaults by Khartoum. Estimates of how many have actually been displaced by violence and humanitarian distress run to the many tens of thousands, but Khartoum’s denial of humanitarian assessment makes any figure a guess. Human Rights Watch reports that,

“In the first week of October, government forces bombed numerous villages on the road from Deribat to Soni, and a cluster of villages south of Soni, including Feina, destroying hundreds of homes, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. Government troops in the area have prevented civilians from returning to their farms. On October 25, [2010] government soldiers stationed in Soni allegedly killed a woman while she was returning to her farm near Soni with her two daughters. The attacks, which continue to date, caused tens of thousands of civilians to flee their homes, mostly to scattered settlements in rebel-controlled areas that the government has made off-limits to UN and humanitarian organizations. Sources on the ground told Human Rights Watch that the health conditions of displaced populations are deteriorating. The total number of casualties in the recent attacks is not known.” (“Halt Waves of Attacks on Civilians in Darfur,” November 11, 2010) (emphasis added) (http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/11/11/sudan-halt-wave-attacks-civilians-darfur )

Tens of thousands of people have also been displaced in the first five months of 2011; the estimate is necessarily a crude extrapolation, but reports from the ground are of clearly substantial new displaced persons.  The UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) reported (March 16, 2011) that “an estimated 66,000 IDPs have arrived in camps in North and South Darfur since January.”

What this statistical overview of displacement strongly suggests is that since January 1, 2008, when UNAMID officially took over the civilian protection mandate from the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), almost 1 million civilians have been newly displaced, in many cases for the second or third time. Any assessment of humanitarian conditions in Darfur simply must take account of the extraordinary trauma of violent displacement, as well as the deeply dispiriting—and dangerous—lives that most displaced people lead in camps that far too often provide inadequate services.