Forced Displacement In Africa: Dimensions, Difficulties, And Policy Directions

Abstract

Forced displacement has become a defining characteristic of sub-Saharan Africa, obliging people to abandon their homes and seek refuge elsewhere, often at the price of serious threats to their welfare and rights. Focusing on mass displacements, this article examines the changing scope, scale, and dynamics of the problem of human displacement in Africa. The article then goes on to analyse a number of policy challenges related to this issue: the principle and practice of asylum; insecurity in refugee-populated areas; protracted refugee situations; the return and reintegration of displaced people; and the protection of people who have been displaced within their own country.

Movers or Stayers? Understanding the Drivers of IDP Camp Decongestion During Post-Conflict Recovery in Uganda

“…Of these, about 27.5 million were displaced within their own countries (IDMC, 2011). The African continent hosts almost half of the internally displaced persons (hereafter, IDPs), most of whom are victims of civil conflict (Crisp, 2010;Czaika and Kis-Katos, 2009;Ojeda, 2010).…”

Introduction: Notes on political economies of displacement in southern Africa

“…Africa is represented routinely as a continent in crisis and political disarray Á a claim that is supported with reference to unimaginably large numbers of people displaced both within their own countries and beyond their national borders (Baker and Aina 1995;Bascom 1995;Crisp 2002Crisp , 2006Schultheis 1989). Such numbers tend to vary significantly from source to source, so that any sure figures are hard to confirm.…”

“…This was partly due to success in finding 'durable solutions' for some of the millions of refugees across the world. But it also reflected the growing reluctance on the part of many states to receive refugees in large numbers or even to consider claims of political asylum (Crisp 2006). Constraints on asylum intensified even further in many countries in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001.…”

Improving local land governance? Exploring the linkages between land governance reforms, institutional pluralism and tenure security in Burundi

“…In post-war settings, forced displacement is likely to result in increasing competition for natural resources through the proliferation of overlapping claims over access to land and property rights (Fischer and Vollmer 2009;Crisp 2010). Beyond their fundamental contribution to identity and belonging, livelihood strategies, and agrarian economies in most developing countries (Kamungi, Oketch, and Huggins 2005;Lund 2011), access to land and property rights are instrumental for consolidating peace, and for constituting and negotiating authority and power in the aftermath of violent conflicts (Lund and Boone 2013;Sikor and Lund 2009;Unruh 2003;Unruh and Williams 2013).…”