Since 2006, an estimated 7,700 Lao-Hmong who had sought refuge into neighbouring Thailand claiming persecution by the Lao government due to their role during the civil war have been forcibly sent back to Laos, both countries considering them as “illegal migrants”. An unknown number of Hmong, believed not to exceed a few hundreds, may remain displaced within Laos, hiding in small groups in the jungle in fear attacks by government forces. The majority of those who have come out of hiding and those who have been repatriated from Thailand have been resettled in existing or new villages where the government claims all their needs will be catered to.

Some international human rights groups have expressed serious doubts about the voluntary character of their return and resettlement as well as concern about the curtailment of some of their fundamental rights in the resettlement sites such as freedom of movements or the right to an adequate standard of living due to inadequate resources or limited livelihood opportunities. Past resettlement schemes carried out by the government since the 1980s as part of its development and poverty alleviation strategy have sometimes resulted in increase food insecurity and higher mortality rates for the resettled population. In the absence of independent access provided to the resettled Hmong groups, it remains difficult to assess whether they will be able to achieve durable solutions.

The government does not acknowledge any internal displacement due to conflict or human rights violations, with displaced Hmong hiding in the jungle considered as mere “bandits” and those who have been repatriated from Thailand as “illegal migrants” or “victims of traffickers”. Return and resettlement are the two options offered to displaced Hmong who surrender and returnees from Thailand. There are no international organisations directly involved in assisting any of the displaced groups. In recent years, most of the international efforts have focused on advocacy activities often carried out from the United States where large numbers of Hmong have resettled since 1975 and where they have managed to establish effective lobby groups.

In November 2010 the first national elections since 1990 were held in Myanmar. While the party set up by the previous government and the armed forces retain most legislative and executive power, the elections may nevertheless have opened up a window of opportunity for greater civilian governance and power-sharing. At the same time, recent fighting between opposition non-state armed groups (NSAGs) and government forces in Kayin/Karen, Kachin, and Shan States, which displaced many within eastern Myanmar and into Thailand and China, is a sign that ethnic tensions remain serious and peace elusive.

Since April 2009, armed conflict between the armed forces and NSAGs has intensified, as several NSAGs that had concluded a ceasefire with the government in the 1990s refused to obey government orders to transform into army-led border guard forces.

Displacement in the context of armed conflict is not systematically monitored by any independent organisation inside the country. Most available information on displacement comes from organisations based on the Thai side of the Thailand-Myanmar border. Limited access to affected areas and lack of independent monitoring make it virtually impossible to verify their reports of the numbers and situations of internally displaced people (IDPs). Although the conflicts in other areas of Myanmar have probably also led to displacement, the only region for which estimates have been available was the south-east, where more than 400,000 people were believed to be living in internal displacement in 2010. More than 70,000 among them were estimated to be newly displaced.

People displaced due to conflict in Myanmar lack access to food, clean water, health care, education and livelihoods. Their security is threatened by ongoing fighting, including where conflict parties reportedly target civilians directly. Although the limited access of humanitarians to most conflict-affected areas has hampered the provision of assistance and protection, the Government of Myanmar took a positive step in 2010 by concluding an agreement with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the provision of assistance to conflict-affected communities.

IDMC estimates that there are up to 642,600 internally displaced people (IDPs) in Myanmar, forced to flee their homes by armed conflict and inter-communal violence. The figure includes up to 400,000 people living in protracted displacement as a result of conflict in the south-east of the country – in southern Shan, Kayah, Kayin and Mon states and Bago and Tanintharyi regions - and 98,000 displaced by conflict in Kachin and northern Shan states since 2011. It also includes around 140,000 people displaced by inter-communal violence in Rakhine state since 2012, and more than 5,000 who fled their homes in Mandalay region in 2013. Disasters brought on by natural hazards and forced evictions linked to land grabs and the exploitation of natural resources have caused further displacement, including in areas where people have already fled conflict and violence.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance constitute a significant obstacle to IDPs’ return in Kachin, northern Shan and the south-east. Internally displaced women and girls in Kachin and northern Shan face the threat of sexual violence. Muslim IDPs in Rakhine are confined to camps, where they have little or no ac-cess to health care, education or livelihoods, and shelters are in need of maintenance in Rakhine, Kachin and northern Shan. In the south-east, on the other hand, many IDPs are thought to be well on their way to achieving durable solutions through return or local integration, but estimating their number and gauging their outstanding needs is a challenge.

Myanmar has no policy or legislation on internal displacement, and the government’s response has varied from region to region. Following the signing of ceasefire agreements, IDPs in the south-east should be better consulted and should be enabled to participate more in peace negotiations to ensure that their needs and aspirations in terms of durable solutions are addressed. UN mechanisms such as clusters and sectors coordinate the international response in Rakhine, Kachin and northern Shan, but generally humanitarian access is difficult in Rakhine, and in areas of Kachin and northern Shan not under government control.

As of early 2012, it was estimated that around 50,000 Nepalese displaced between 1996 and 2006 remained unable or unwilling to return to their homes due to unresolved land and property issues, insecurity and lack of assistance. This does not include several thousand people displaced by inter-communal violence and insecurity since 2007 in the central and eastern Terai (the region south of the Himalayan foothills), a group largely ignored by both the government and international humanitarian organisations. Displacement in Nepal has largely followed a rural-urban pattern, with most people moving in small groups to seek refuge with friends and relatives in the main towns and cities where most IDPs remain.

The Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA), signed between the Government of Nepal and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in November 2006, ended a decade-long conflict. The govern-ment encouraged post-CPA returns by covering transportation costs and providing a four-month subsistence allowance to those agreeing to return. However, this has often been insufficient to either convince all IDPs to return or to ensure the sustainability of returns. Land and property seized during the conflict has still not been returned in all districts and remains the main obstacle to the return of the displaced. Some groups, such as widows, face particular difficulties in reclaiming property due to limited economic rights and lack of legal documentation. Well-off and well-connected IDPs have generally managed to move on with their lives in their area of displacement. However, many of the poorest IDPs have struggled to find housing, new livelihoods or access to basic services. The vulnerability of women and children, particularly those from female-headed households, has made them often more likely to be exposed to a range of threats including exploitation and sexual violence.

A national IDP policy was promulgated in 2007 but has failed to meet its objective to ensure protection and assistance to all people displaced by conflict and to promote their rights to return, integrate locally or settle elsewhere. A flawed and uneven registration process started in 2007 has excluded many IDPs from assistance. Not all who managed to get registered have received assistance: less than a third of the 89,000 IDPs officially registered by the government have received any form of support. The government needs to adopt the revised IDP policy and its implementation guidelines if IDPs are to enjoy their full rights and achieve durable solutions. Until then, many IDPs will continue to lack access to proper information on their legal rights and entitlements. Local government representatives will lack guidance to ensure an even and effective IDP registration process. The government’s decision in December 2011 not to extend the mandate of OHCHR, the main UN agency working on promoting IDP rights, will further reduce international capacity to support IDPs in Nepal.

More than three years after the government of Nepal and the Maoists ended their ten-year conflict, up to 70,000 people displaced by the war remain unable or unwilling to return home. Ongoing political crisis has hampered the peace process and the prospects for reconciliation and durable solutions to displacement.

Repeated Maoist commitments to return confiscated houses and land are yet to be honoured in several districts, and internally displaced people (IDPs) from non-Maoist political parties have found it particularly hard to recover property. The government return package has been limited to those officially registered, and in many districts, up to half of IDPs have been unable to register for assistance. The post-war economy is depressed and there is limited access to basic services in rural areas, so many returnees have had to go back to towns and cities again in search of work.

Most IDPs have chosen to stay in their area of displacement, mainly in urban areas, where some have managed to integrate and to find jobs. Many others, including displaced children and women in particular, have struggled to find proper accommodation or access basic services in cities. Children are exposed to a variety of threats, including trafficking, sexual exploitation and child labour. Displaced women, particularly widows, suffer from significant discrimination, making them highly vulnerable to further impoverishment and forcing many to resort to prostitution.

While its 2007 IDP policy provides for return, integration and resettlement, the government has only offered assistance to those seeking to return. The policy has still not been disseminated effectively across the country. For most remaining IDPs there will be no durable solutions without completion of registration, return and reintegration assistance, land and property restitution, and vocational training and income-generating projects to support reintegration. 

Counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations and violent clashes between non-state armed groups continue to lead to major, rapid movements of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Pakistan’s volatile north-west. Within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Khyber and Kurram agencies are currently the worst-affected areas. More than 415,000 people were newly displaced in 2012, and at least 131,000 more have fled their homes since mid-March this year (OCHA, March 2013, p.2; OCHA, 6 June 2013). There are now 1.1 million IDPs registered as displaced by conflict in the north-west, and many more are unregistered in the region and elsewhere (IDMC, 31 May 2011, p.1; UNHCR, 7 May 2013). 

An estimated five million people have been displaced by conflict, sectarian violence and wide-spread human rights abuses in the north-west as a whole since 2004. Disaster-induced displacement has been even more extensive. Around 15 million people were displaced across the country by three years of monsoon flooding between 2010 and 2012, and millions more by earthquakes and drought over the years (IDMC, January 2012, p.1; IDMC, May 2013, p.18).

Conflict-related displacement reached a peak in 2009, when three million people were displaced in the north-west, 2.3 million of them from the Malakand region of Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KP) province. By the end of 2010, the number of IDPs had fallen to around one million, but returns have since been offset by new displacements. Today, Pakistan faces a renewed displacement crisis fuelled by massive new forced population movements in FATA, the current focus of conflict in the region.

Displacement leads to a range of serious protection challenges, including threats to life and freedom of movement. Those living in camps are generally considered most in need of assistance. That said, two thirds of IDPs outside camps live below the poverty line and do not have adequate access to food, housing and basic services. National and international responses have been substantial, but they have not consistently been rights-based. In the vast majority of cases, only IDPs who meet government criteria for registration are eligible for food assistance. Efforts towards improving the registration system have been made recently, but serious concerns persist that the provision of humanitarian aid is neither impartial nor targeted at the most vulnerable. Major reform is still required to bring the criteria for registration into line with the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and to deliver assistance to those most in need, including protracted and urban IDPs.

Internal displacement in Pakistan’s north-western Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa (KP) has continued for at least six years, but reached a massive scale from 2008 to 2009. As of the end of July 2010, there were around two million internally displaced people (IDPs), 1.4 million of them registered by the government. The flooding has particularly affected populations which had been displaced by the conflict. This crisis has heightened their vulnerability and may force many to return to home areas despite ongoing insecurity there or resettle in major cities.

The causes of displacement have included human rights abuses by militant groups, conflicts be-tween tribal leaders and militant Islamic rivals, and sectarian clashes. But military operations by government forces, sometimes in cooperation with some militant groups, have been the principle cause.

Men and women are equally represented; 60 per cent of IDPs are children. Some ethnic groups are disproportionally affected. Since the expansion of the insurgency and the government’s counter-insurgency operations, short-distance displacements have become untenable. More IDPs have fled in fear of impending violence, and displacements have become more protracted. Moreover, as communities become ever more entangled in the conflict, local integration and return have increasingly become unsafe.

More than 90 per cent of IDPs live in rented accommodation or with families where there is an accept-able level of privacy. Host communities have gradually become less able to support IDPs, and more IDPs have been forced to seek shelter in camps. Most IDPs registered between early 2009 and mid-2010 have received better food and medical care than was available before the displacement. But those who have not been registered have relied entirely on their own resources and those of hosts.

Education in areas of displacement and return has continuously been interrupted by insecurity, destruction of school building and occupation of schools by people displaced by the conflict, or by the flooding which hit north-west Pakistan in August 2010.

The response to the displacement crisis, led by the Pakistani army, has been considerable. But the interests of IDPs have been subordinated to counter-insurgency concerns: some communities have had to negotiate with security forces to form self-defence groups as a condition for their re-turn, leaving them at extreme risk during displacement and upon return. Insecurity, refusal of ac-cess and funding shortages have stopped international agencies reaching all the people in need.

As of July 2015, there were more than 1.8 million people displaced by insurgency, counter-insurgency and other related violence in Pakistan.

Military operations against non-state armed groups (NSAGs) have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee North Waziristan and Khyber agencies since May 2014. Both agencies are part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the north-west of the country, a region that has suffered fighting and displacement for a number of years. By the end of 2014, up to 907,000 people had been newly displaced, and as of July 2015, there were an estimated 1.56 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in the north-west, including those who fled in previous years and after deducting returns.  

A separatist insurgency and military operations against it have also caused displacement in the south-western province of Balochistan since 2005. Up to 275,000 people are thought to be living in protracted displacement there and in other parts of the country, with no real prospect of achieving durable solutions.

Disasters induced by natural hazards such as monsoon rains and earthquakes have newly displaced 14.57 million people across wide areas of the country since 2010. The number of people still living in displacement following disasters in previous years is not known.

Before last year’s spike in new displacements in FATA, 4.8 million people had registered as IDPs in the country as a whole since 2008, most of them as a result of violent clashes in the north-west. The majority have returned to their places of habitual residence, but many returnees continue to require assistance in achieving a durable solution to their displacement.

Most IDPs in the north-west live in rented accommodation in host communities. They tend to avoid camps for cultural reasons, including women’s privacy, and seek refuge in such places only as a last resort.

As of November 2014, at least 22,500 people were displaced in Papua New Guinea (PNG) as a result of conflict or natural hazard-related disasters. Two thirds of internally displaced people (IDPs) have been displaced by natural hazards, the remainder by conflict. In many areas, natural disasters, conflict, violence and development projects often coincide to create an environment conducive to displacement.

The majority of those displaced by conflict and disaster live in Madang and Morobe provinces on PNG’s northern coast. A conservative estimate puts the number of people newly displaced by violence in 2014 at 1,200. Data collection on the number and needs of IDPs is a major challenge in the absence of a clear IDP definition and weak disaster monitoring and data collection systems. IDPs are not recognised as a distinct category of affected people with specific protection or assistance needs and their numbers are not captured in disaster assessments.

Nearly all IDPs are living in protracted displacement, having been displaced for between four and ten years and having failed to return or successfully find other durable solutions. Around 85 per cent of the displaced are living in government-established IDP camps, officially termed “care centres”, while the remainder are living with host families. Prolonged displacement in camps is often accompanied by a deterioration of living conditions, with IDPs increasingly left on their own to meet their basic needs and sustain themselves. Tension with host communities has sometimes erupted into conflict over land and resources, putting IDPs at risk of violence and sometimes secondary displacement. Lack of food, clean water and adequate sanitary facilities and reduced access to healthcare is a major problem both in IDP camps and host communities.

Lack of funding, capacity and political will hamper the search for durable solutions. The fact that almost all land is held under customary tenure complicates efforts to provide land for those who choose not to return.

Nearly two years after the end of hostilities between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government, up to 5,000 displaced families are still thought to be living in camps and relocation sites in southern Mindanao, most of them in the province of Maguindanao. There are also an unknown number of people, some of them possibly included in this figure, displaced by clan violence (known locally as rido), which has been on the rise since the 2009 ceasefire. Rido is now the main cause of displacement in Mindanao. Other internally displaced people (IDPs) are still living in informal settlements or with host communities in both rural and urban areas, but as they are not included in official government data, their number and their needs are for the large part unknown. Many of those still living in camps are waiting for a final peace agreement and better security guarantees before returning home, while others stay because they have better access to basic facilities and livelihood opportunities there than in their home areas.

The majority of the estimated 750,000 people displaced between August 2008 and July 2009 have now returned or resettled elsewhere, but many remain in need of humanitarian assistance and support to help them rebuild their homes and lives. Most of those who returned in 2010 and 2011 face similar problems to the earlier returnees - limited access to agricultural assets, education, health care services and water and sanitation facilities. Having lost their household and productive assets and accumulated significant debts as a result of their displacement, most cannot afford to replace lost livestock and tools or to buy essential agricultural items such as seeds, pesticides and fertilisers. Not all of those who return manage to regain access to their land or homes, many of which have been severely damaged or destroyed. In some areas, unexploded ordnance and the volatile security situation are further obstacles to sustainable returns.

With most IDPs and returnees now in need of recovery rather than emergency assistance, a number of new programmes and plans were launched in 2010 and 2011. In 2010, the government of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) launched an Early Recovery Plan that covers 196 communities or barangays, and focuses on 46, all of the latter in Maguindanao. At the end of 2010, the new Philippine government announced a three-year peace-building, re-construction and development initiative that covers all conflict-affected areas in Mindanao and incorporates assistance for IDPs. In February 2011, the UN and its partners launched a humanitarian action plan (HAP) seeking $34 million in funding for 2011. These initiatives signal a real effort to go beyond the provision of immediate relief and pay more attention to IDPs' long-term needs. However, with the emergency phase now over and donor’s attention again moving away from Mindanao, there is concern that many projects will remain un-implemented and therefore fail to make a real difference to IDP's lives.