As far as I can tell, no media outlets whatsoever have picked up on the recent announcement (below, courtesy of a UN news agency) from the UN Secretary-General. The latest figures on internally displaced persons demonstrate the utter disaster which the war in Afghanistan has brought for a wide swath of the population:
IDP numbers up in Afghanistan – UN
KABUL, March 17 (IRIN) – Armed hostilities have boosted the number of internally displaced persons (IDP’s) to over 296,000 but an effective humanitarian response is being hampered by insecurity, the UN Secretary-General says in a new report to the UN Security Council…
“The deterioration of Afghanistan’s security situation has continued, with 2009 being the most volatile year since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, averaging 960 security incidents per month, as compared with 741 in 2008. The situation worsened in January 2010, with the number of security incidents 40 per cent higher than in January 2009,” [the report] said… (link)
Related blog posts:
October 2006: The Senlis Council’s Norine MacDonald reports that IDP’s are “starving” while Canadian soldiers are stationed some 15 minutes away with no mandate to assist them.
November 2007: UNHCR counts 129,000 IDP’s just in southern Afghanistan – a figure which does not include an additional 100,000 people recently displaced by conflict in the south.
May 2008: IDP’s are cautious of returning home. One northerner said: “Commanders and warlords in the north are still seizing people’s land and forcing them to abandon their houses; so how can we return?”
February 2009: UNHCR counts 235,000 IDP’s.
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