A Cambodian refugee, Nouk holds the gift of a Heifer International pig near the Angkor Wat. To help hungry, undernourished families put protein back in their diets at little cost, Heifer teaches farmers how to raise healthy pigs in countries where waste products are the only available feed. Photo by Darcy Kiefel for Heifer International.

Why is it important to help displaced people?

• Refugees flee their nations due to well-founded fear of persecution. Internally displaced people flee for the same reasons, but do not leave their nations.
  
• Soldiers accounted for 90 percent of war-related casualties a century ago. Today, 90 percent of war-related casualties are civilians.
  
• The International Rescue Committee estimates that mortality rates among displaced populations can be 30 percent higher than the mortality rate in the communities from which they have fled, due in large part to such preventable diseases as diarrhea, dehydration and malnutrition.
  
• The U.S. Committee for Refugees estimates 80 percent of the world’s 13 million refugees and 22 million internally displaced people are women or children.

How is the U.S. Government helping refugees and displaced people?

• The U.S. Government continues to be an international leader in the provision of assistance and protection to refugees and IDPs. In Fiscal Year 2002, the Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance within the U.S. Agency for International Development responded to 13 complex humanitarian emergencies in such countries as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Indonesia.
  
• The Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration at the U.S. State Department continues to provide support for refugee assistance and protection efforts throughout the world by funding such international organizations as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and numerous private humanitarian assistance organizations. U.S. funding also helps to support durable solutions for refugee populations around the world, including repatriation and refugee resettlement.

Progress has been made.

• The U.S. State Department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives recently adopted provisions to enhance the protection of refugees against sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian crises.
  
• Refugees and internally displaced persons are returning home in many countries such as Angola, Eritrea and Afghanistan. In Aghanistan alone, nearly 3 million Afghan refugees and displaced persons have returned.

But challenges remain.

• More than 4 million people were displaced in 2002.
  
• More than half the world’s internally displaced people are in Africa.
  
• A recent survey in the west African nation of Sierra Leone found that 94 percent of displaced people there have been the victims of a sexual crime.

Articles on Refugees:

• Rebuilding Afghanistan, Christian Children's Fund, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children
  
• Renewing a Tsunami Devastated Fishing Industry, American Refugee Committee and American Jewish World Service
  
• US Legacy After Hurricane Mitch: Better Water; Sanitation and Gratitude, Action Against Hunger, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, CARE, Save the Children, and Plan International
  
• Disaster Training Gives Kenyans Tools To Help Themselves, International Medical Corps
  
• Young Refugees Learn Life Skills; Gain Self-Sufficiency, International Rescue Committee
• U.S.; India Join Hands to Fight AIDS Stigma in India, Project Concern International
• Malawian Farmers Unite To Find Power; Self-Sufficiency, ACDI/VOCA
  
• Healing Ethnic Wounds through education and partnership, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
  
• Disaster Response and Humanitarian Aid: The Right Thing; The Smart Thing, Lutheran World Relief
  
• Proven Partnership for the Prevention and Eradication of Illness, World Vision, USA for Unicef, the Carter Center, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNDP, the Peace Corps, the World Bank and several governments
  

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Basic Education  |  Health Care  |  Work & Farming Skills  |  Reducing Hunger

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