India: North-East India: People displaced by ethnic violence “forgotten”

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^{31 December 2010}

In 2010, there were several unrelated situations of internal displacement caused by armed conflict and ethnic or communal violence in India. Based on known numbers of IDPs living in camps and registered there, a conservative estimate of the total number of people displaced due to conflict and violence would be at least 650,000. However, the real number, including people dispersed in India’s cities and others living in displacement outside camps, is likely to be significantly higher. There is no central government agency responsible for monitoring the number of people displaced or returning, and humanitarian and human rights agencies have limited access to them.

Included in the 650,000 are people displaced since 1990 by separatist violence target-ing the Hindu minority in Jammu and Kashmir; those displaced in the north-east of the country since 1947 by conflicts between government forces and armed non-state groups as well as by violence between ethnic groups; people displaced in central India by armed conflict over land and mineral resources pitting government forces and government-allied militia against Maoist insurgents; and victims of communal violence between the majority Hindu populations in Gujarat and Orissa states and the states’ respective Muslim and Christian minorities.

In 2010, people were newly displaced in several central and north-eastern states. In central India, more than 100,000 people were displaced by the Naxalite conflict between mid-2009 and mid-2010, with the conflict and displacement contin-uing at the end of 2010. In April, ethnic violence displaced several hundred Nagas, mostly women and children, from Manipur state to Nagaland state. That same month and also in Manipur state, at least 1,500 villagers were forced to leave their homes because of a military operation against armed insurgents. In May, several thousand Nepali-speakers were displaced due to communal violence in the Assam-Meghalaya border region.

Many of India’s IDPs had insufficient access to basic necessities of life such as food, clean water, shelter and health care in 2010. Those in protracted situations still struggled to access education, housing and livelihoods. Tribal IDPs in camps in Chhattisgarh faced the risk of attacks by government forces and government-allied militia on the one hand and Naxalite insurgents on the other.

There is no national policy, legislation or other mechanism to respond to the needs of people displaced by these conflicts, and the national government has generally left their protection to state governments and district authorities, who are often unaware of IDPs’ rights or reluctant to offer support, particularly in cases where they played a role in causing the displacement. As a result, IDPs have struggled to assert their rights.

Their attempts to integrate in the place of displacement or settle elsewhere in India have generally not been supported. At the same time, a number of displaced groups have faced barriers to their return home. While Muslim IDPs in Gujarat continue to endure very poor living conditions, their hopes of return are dim since they are increasingly at risk of losing their original homes and land, which have been taken over by Hindu extremist groups. Christian IDPs in Orissa have been discouraged from returning, as some returnees have been forced to convert to Hinduism.

Where return of IDPs has been possible, not much is known about its sustainability. In the case of more than 30,000 Bru people displaced from Mizoram state to Tripura state in 1997 and 2009, the return process begun in May 2010, but stalled in November because the groups representing the IDPs disagreed over whether to accept the conditions for return proposed by the Mizoram state government. Some groups were concerned about their security after return.

As of 2010, no ministry was mandated with IDP protection, but some national agencies and human rights bodies advo-cated on behalf of people internally displaced by conflict and violence. For example, in February 2010, a delegation of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights visited people from Chhattisgarh who had been displaced to Andhra Pradesh due to the Naxalite conflict, and made recommendations to the Andhra Pradesh state government about the assistance and protection that should be given to these IDPs.

Despite the efforts of these advocates, a national legislative framework is needed to enable the protection of conflict- and violence-induced IDPs in India.

At the same time, only a few international agencies such as Médecins sans Frontières and the ICRC have been allowed to provide protection and assistance to some IDPs.

India: No place to go for forcibly evicted lake dwellers (25 November 2011)

Authorities in the north-eastern state of Manipur forcibly evicted over 3,000 residents of floating islands (Phumdis) in Loktak Lake between 15 November and 22 November, according to the Telegraph of Calcutta. The huts were burned and the residents lost all their belongings, including essential items such as fishing equipment, school certificates and valuables.

The evictions were carried out under the Loktak Lake (Protection) Act of 2006, which prohibits settling on Phumdis and fishing in the core area of the lake, and were justified by the authorities as a measure to protect the lake’s ecosystem. The evicted people were offered Rs. 40,000 (about $800) as compensation, but no land to settle on. They took shelter in a stadium, which the police then forced them to leave.

However, the environmental protection aims of the authorities may have masked other reasons for the evictions, including their effort to drive insurgents out of the area. The deterioration of the ecosystem of Loktak Lake has mostly been the result not of human settlement, but of hydrological changes introduced by the Ithai Dam commissioned in 1983. The lake has also been reported to be polluted by urban waste coming from the rivers that pass through Manipur’s cities.

From the 1990s to the start of 2011, over 800,000 people were forced to flee their homes in episodes of inter-ethnic violence in western Assam, along the border between Assam and Meghalaya, and in Tripura. According to conservative estimates, more than 76,000 of them are still living in displacement in November 2011, but in the absence of proper monitoring it is not known how many of the rest have been able to rebuild their lives.

These internally displaced people (IDPs) are not receiving the protection and assistance they need, according to a new report launched today by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
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Press release: North-East India: People displaced by ethnic violence “forgotten”
Report: “This is our land”: Ethnic violence and internal displacement in north-east India
Summary and recommendations