FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 13, 2000
Contact: Melissa Wyers
(202) 347-3507

Africa's Refugee Numbers Climb As New Violence Uproots 3 Million People

Africa

More than 3 million people in 15 African countries were forced to flee their homes because of war, insurgencies, and repression during 1999, driving up the number of uprooted people on the African continent to 13.7 million, according to a new report issued by the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR).

Although some newly uprooted people subsequently returned home safely, about 3.1 million Africans remain refugees and some 10.6 million are displaced within their own countries, according to the USCR report, World Refugee Survey 2000.

The 328-page annual report contains summaries of refugee-related events in 36 African countries and 90 other countries around the world.

"Events during the past year have triggered extraordinary population upheaval in Africa," said Jeff Drumtra, senior Africa policy analyst at USCR. "When crises force African families to run for their lives, they have very little margin for survival. It is particularly sad that in poor African countries such as Sierra Leone, Angola, and Congo-Kinshasa, warfare for control over local diamonds, gold, and oil have produced added misery for so many of the world's most impoverished people."

Last year alone, an estimated 800,000 people fled their homes because of political violence in Congo-Brazzaville; at least a half-million people became newly displaced by a resurgence of Angola's long-running civil war; more than 400,000 were newly uprooted in both Burundi and Congo-Kinshasa; and a combined 350,000 people fled because of the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Violence and repression also forced large populations to flee last year in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Uganda, Somalia, and five other African countries.

Additional information about Africa contained in World Refugee Survey 2000:

• Sixty percent of Africa's uprooted people are from four countries: Sudan (4.4 million uprooted); Angola (1.8 million or more); Burundi (1.1 million); and Congo-Kinshasa (1 million). Violence and other dangers have pushed a half-million or more people from their homes over the years in Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Somalia, Rwanda, and Congo-Brazzaville. Population flight is pervasive in Africa: A total of 20 countries on the continent are each the source of 10,000 or more uprooted people.

• Five countries are providing asylum to more than half of Africa's 3.1 million refugees. The five major refugee-hosting countries are: Guinea (hosts 450,000 refugees); Tanzania (hosts 410,000 refugees); Sudan (hosts 360,000); Kenya (255,000); and Ethiopia (245,000). A total of 27 African countries-more than half of all countries on the continent-are hosting significant numbers of refugees.

• Nearly one-third of all African refugees are seeking asylum in countries that are themselves experiencing armed conflict. This means that 1.2 million African refugees have fled to potentially unsafe asylum countries.

• About a quarter-million African refugees voluntarily repatriated to their home countries during 1999 in hopes that peace would prevail. Significant numbers of refugees returned home last year to Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Somalia, Angola, and six other countries. Some 1.2 million African refugees have voluntarily repatriated during the past three years. Hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons also returned home.