Global Overview 2015: People internally displaced by conflict and violence - Middle East and north Africa

Figures and causes of displacement

The number of IDPs in the Middle East and north Africa rose to a new record for the third consecutive year, reaching at least 11.9 million by the end of 2014. The figure, which aggregates estimates for Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen, represents nearly a third of all the people displaced by conflict worldwide.

From 2001 until 2011, displacement in the region accounted for a mere seven to 14 per cent of the global figure, the increase caused by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent sectarian war. Iraq aside, the region as a whole was relatively stable until 2011, with displacement driven primarily by low-intensity and nationally contained conflicts involving sporadic large-scale military operations.

The 2011 uprisings coined the "Arab spring", however, ushered in a period of chronic political instability and civil war, with conflict and its repercussions spilling over national borders and convulsing the region. In the last four years, more than 7.8 million people have fled their homes, joining 4.1 million people already living in protracted displacement.

There were at least 7.6 million IDPs in Syria as of the end of 2014, the highest number in the region and almost an 18fold increase over the last four years. The number of IDPs in Iraq has almost nearly doubled over the same period to at least 3.3 million. The two countries accounted for 91 per cent of the displacement recorded in the region, but the number of IDPs also increased in other countries. At least 400,000 people had fled their homes in Libya, more than a 6-fold increase on 2013, and the number of IDPs in occupied Palestine reached at least 275,000. In Yemen, returns ebbed and around 100,000 people were displaced by renewed conflict, bringing the total figure for the country to 334,100.

The sharp increase in the number of IDPs in Iraq and Syria reflects not only the failure of national authorities to prevent displacement and protect those fleeing, but also the role they have played in exploiting and instigating conflict for political or economic gain. As noted by the UN special rapporteur on IDPs, displacement has been used as a strategy of war, with the Syrian armed forces directly targeting civilians and forcing them to flee.^[152] NSAGs have resorted to the same strategy.

In occupied Palestine, discriminatory Israeli policies and practices have caused the displacement of Palestinians. The Islamic State(ISIL)'s territorial expansion from Syria into Iraq, and the Iraqi authorities' response, have also forced civilians to flee their homes.^[153] Displacement in Yemen and Libya has been made worse by renewed insurgencies that have caused significant political instability.

Monitoring IDPs in urban areas, where most are located, is a particular challenge, made more difficult by the intensity and unpredictable dynamics of the fighting, which has also led to people being displaced more than once.

OCHA leads data gathering in Syria in consultation with other UN partners, NGOs and the national authorities. Its efforts, however, have been hampered by insecurity, access restrictions imposed by the authorities and NSAGs. In addition, both have been reluctant to share information on displacement. In July 2014, the UN estimated that 4.7 million people – IDPs and local residents – were trapped in hard-to-reach areas of the country.

In Iraq, IOM and UNHCR rely on their local staff and the national authorities for information, but areas under ISIL's control have been extremely hard to reach. The group controls almost all of Anbar, Ninewa and Salah-el-Din governorates.

Data on displacement in Libya has become much sketchier since July, when most international humanitarian and development organisations, UN agencies and ICRC moved their operations to Tunisia following the outbreak of renewed fighting. In Yemen too, the resumption of conflict and the access restrictions it caused were significant challenges to data collection. Complex displacement patterns and the fact the many people have been forced to flee more than once made the task more complicated still.

New displacement and displacement patterns

Across the region, 3.8 million people, or around 10,500 a day, were newly displaced in 2014. Iraq, Libya and Syria accounted for much of total, but Israel's military incursion into the Gaza Strip in July and August also displaced as many as 500,000 Palestinians, at least 117,000 of whom were still displaced at the end of the year. Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip effectively trapped IDPs in the conflict area, meaning that the safety they were able to seek when they fled their homes was distinctly relative. By comparison, displacement inside Israel occurred on an extremely limited scale.

IDPs were also trapped in conflict areas in Syria, where civilians were displaced a number of times as front lines shifted, both in fighting between government forces and armed opposition groups, and among the rebels themselves.

In Iraq, almost all those newly displaced came from areas that fell under ISIL's control. The Kurdish region received almost half of the new IDPs, while 38 per cent remained within their own governorate. ISIL fighters specifically targeted certain religious and ethnic communities, including Christians, Shia Muslims, Druze, Yazidis, Kurds and Turkomen, who fled to escape massacres, abductions, the destruction of property, forced marriages and the sexual enslavement of women.^[154] In Libya and Yemen conflict engulfed the most populated areas of both countries.

In a region where camps are associated with the Palestinian cause and Israeli violations, governments have generally been reluctant to establish them. The majority of IDPs live with host families or in informal settlements in urban areas. Only two per cent of IDPs in Syria live in camps in areas beyond government control along the Turkish and Jordanian border. In Iraq the figure is nine per cent. As many as 96 per cent of Yemen's IDPs are thought to live in urban settings, avoiding camps for cultural reasons and their perception of them as promiscuous environments.^[155]

Protection issues

Displacement in the region has increased mainly as a result of gross and systematic violations of human rights and international humanitarian law perpetrated by various states and NSAGs over decades. The asymmetrical nature of the region's conflicts, in which conventional armies such as those of Israel, Syria and Iraq are pitted against NSAGs, and the fact that fighting often takes place in urban areas, mean that civilians have been disproportionately affected.

Counterinsurgency operations have eroded the distinction between combatants and civilians, who are often clubbed together with the "terrorists". Those living in areas controlled by NSAGs have been targeted with the aim of driving them out and depriving them of potential sources of support.^[156] Authorities in Iraq and Syria have increasingly relied on sectarian paramilitary forces that have not been held accountable for grave and widespread human rights abuses and the mass displacement of many thousands of families.^[157] The collapse of central authority in weaker states such Libya and Yemen has also driven displacement to a lesser extent.

As with previous incursions, Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip in July and August 2014 affected all 1.8 million people living in a small territory with a population density of 4,661 inhabitants per square kilometre. Two thousand people were killed during the incursion, in- cluding almost 1,500 civilians, and around 500,000 people were displaced.

Israeli forces also targeted and destroyed six UN schools and damaged 108 others where more than 100,000 IDPs had taken refuge, killing 38 civilians and 11 UN workers. Palestinian militants had stored rockets in some of the facilities in violation of humanitarian law.^[158] Israel's strict blockade of the Gaza Strip, in place since 2007, has left 80 per cent of its population dependent on humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs. At least 57 per cent are food insecure.^[159]

Syrian forces have carried out regular and indiscriminate attacks in urban areas, including the use of barrel bombs packed with explosives and shrapnel, and sometimes hitting areas with high concentrations of IDPs.^[160] Government and, to a lesser extent, NSAGs have also prevented civilians from fleeing and seeking refuge, most notably by imposing sieges. At least 212,000 people came under siege in 2014.^[161]

The situation was particularly alarming for 18,000 Palestinian refugees trapped in the Yarmouk camp south of Damascus, where heavy fighting prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid, and famine and morbidity set in.^[162] Civilians' right to freedom of movement has also been restricted by internal and border checkpoints. A number of Syrians have been prevented from crossing international borders in search of safety and have become IDPs instead. Since the beginning of the conflict, Palestinian refugees in Syria have been among those most affected by such restrictions, given that both Lebanon and Jordan have policies and regulations in place that make it almost impossible for them to enter. Increasingly, similar policies have also come to affect all asylum seekers.

Armed militias in Libya have targeted Tawergha, Mashashya, Gualish, Tuareg and African migrants with retaliatory violence, because they were known or perceived to be former Qadhafi loyalists. First displaced in 2011, they were regularly forced to flee again in 2014 by fighting in Tripoli, Benghazi and the Nafusa mountains. In Yemen's Amran governorate, displaced members of the Muhamasheen community complained about their exclusion from humanitarian assistance and harassment based on their ethnicity.^[163]

Up to 1.7 million people in Syria were in need of shelter support as of December 2014, with the governorates between Damascus and Aleppo being the worst affected. The areas most in need have high numbers of IDPs, have suffered extensive damage and destruction and are difficult to access. According to a multisectoral needs assessment carried out in 2014, 40 per cent of IDPs in need of shelter assistance were living in Aleppo governorate, which has been particularly hard-hit by the conflict.^[164]

Food insecurity is a serious concern in the region. In Yemen, 41 per cent of children under five are stunted because of malnutrition, with the most acute cases prevalent among IDPs.^[165] Outbreaks of diseases such as polio have also been reported as a result of inadequate sanitation facilities in Iraq and Syria.^[166] Health facilities in conflict zones are often overstretched, damaged and sometimes out of IDPs' reach. Israeli air strikes and artillery fire have damaged 17 of the Gaza Strip's 32 hospitals. Libya's health system is thought to be close to collapse, the result of a chronic shortage of medical supplies and the fact that most staff, who were expatriate in the first place, have fled the country.^[167]

Durable solutions

Given continuing conflicts and civil war in which all parties have deliberately targeted civilians, killing tens of thousands of people and driving millions into displacement, durable solutions are simply not a realistic prospect for the vast majority of the region's IDPs.

A few have managed to go back to their places of origin in the immediate aftermath of large-scale military operations, but most face major if not insurmountable obstacles to return, local integration or settlement elsewhere. Insecurity, high levels of violence, gross human rights abuses and the destruction of housing and infrastructure are all widespread, economies are weak and in some cases in danger of collapse and prospects for political reconciliation are remote.

The bombing of densely populated urban areas that accompanied Israel's 2014 incursion into the Gaza Strip severely damaged at least 16,000 homes. It left 117,000 Palestinians living in protracted displacement as of the end of 2014, alongside around 16,000 still displaced after previous Israeli operations. Given Israel's blockade, which among many other things severely restricts the import of building materials, durable solutions are all but beyond their reach.

At least 142,000 Palestinians live in protracted displacement in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the result not only of Israel's discriminatory zoning policies and practices that support settlement expansion at the expense of Palestinians' rights, but also because of the restrictions it imposes on where those affected can flee to.

The sectarian nature of the conflict in Iraq has prevented many IDPs from returning or making a voluntary and informed choice about their preferred settlement option. Sectarian divisions are further complicated by the lack of national reconciliation and the absence of effective state authorities, as is also the case in Libya and Yemen.

215,400 people in Yemen, the majority in the south of country, were registered as returnees in November. Return, however, cannot necessarily be equated with the achievement of durable solutions, as many are still likely to have assistance and protection needs.^[168]

For hundreds of thousands of IDPs in Syria, return is simply not an option, given that 1.2 million homes, or 30 per cent of the country's housing stock registered in the 2014 census, are thought to have been damaged or destroyed.^[170]

National and international response

Most governments in the region have failed to fulfil their international obligations to prevent and respond to displacement, leading to a lack of durable solutions and an ever-increasing rise in the number of IDPs living in protracted displacement.

In the West Bank including East Jerusalem, Israel has not only failed to prevent or respond to the displacement of Palestinians. It has intentionally caused it with the aim of changing the physical and demographic character of the territories it occupies.^[169] Israeli authorities have also hampered humanitarian efforts to help IDPs. They have even destroyed aid, which led ICRC to suspend its delivery of tents to displaced Palestinians in February 2014.^[171]

All parties to the conflict have prevented the delivery of international assistance since 2011, despite two UN Security Council resolutions calling for the restrictions to be eased.^[172] In Iraq's Kurdish region, where 1.45 million IDPs sought refuge in 2014, the authorities provided shelter for Kurds, Christian and Yazidi communities, but they sent Sunni, Shia and Turkomen IDPs back to temporary sites on the region's borders or elsewhere in Iraq.^[173]

The country has made noteworthy efforts to address displacement in terms of registering IDPs, coordinating between federal and local authorities and allocating cash allowances. That said, however, corruption, bureaucracy and political tensions at all levels have prevented an effective response, either for those newly displaced in 2014, or for the 1.1 million people who have been living in protracted displacement since as far back as 2006.

In Libya, a crisis committee set up by the prime minister in September to coordinate the delivery of assistance to IDPs^[174] was unable to fulfil its functions when the authorities collapsed, leaving most of the response to the Libyan Red Crescent Society and local tribes. Yemen's national policy on displacement, which was adopted in 2013, has not been implemented.

The deterioration of the situation in the Middle East in 2014 was met with a significant increase in funding requests for international responses. The appeals for the 2014 UN strategic response plans for Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen totalled almost $6 billion, up from $3.4 billion in 2013. The Syria and Iraq appeals were the largest, accounting for around $4.4bn. The Palestine appeal more than doubled from around $400 million to more than $920 million. The Yemen appeal fell by more than $100 million to stand at almost $600 million, a reflection more than anything of the scale of the country's humanitarian crisis in 2013.^[175]

New donors have contributed to the 2014 appeals. Saudi Arabia gave more than $684 million, most of which went to Iraq. Kuwait gave $348 million, and the United Arab Emirates and Qatar around $264 million between them. Other than Iraq, the main recipients were Palestine and Syria.

Despite such donations, all of the appeals were severely underfunded as of the end of 2014, with none of them reaching 50 per cent except for Yemen, which was funded at 54 per cent. As a result, the World Food Programme reduced its vital food distributions in Syria in September.^[176] Libya issued its first ever appeal, but less than two per cent of the modest $35 million request was funded.

The main challenge in terms of the international response has been one of access. The Syrian authorities have long prevented assistance from reaching opposition areas, while Israel has imposed a number of obstacles in Palestine, from permit regimes and closures to the destruction of aid supplies. The deteriorating security situation in Libya has forced international responders to relocate to Tunisia, and insecurity in Yemen has severely restricted humanitarian access. NSAGs such as ISIL have also targeted international humanitarian organisations and prevented the delivery of aid in areas under their control.

152 UN General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced People, Chaloka Beyani, Protection of and assistance to internally displaced persons: situation of internally displaced persons in the Syrian Arab Republic, July 2013, available at: http://goo.gl/cjzlOF

153 IDMC, Palestine country overview, 27 October 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/NZ4ggK; Al Jazeera, Millions of Iraqis displaced by ISIL, 12 January 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/C2Bwst

154 UNSC, Security Council Press Statement on Persecution of Minorities in Mosul, Iraq, 12 July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/TtzZnp; IASC, Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq Gender Alert, September 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/Wf3PX2

155 SNAP, Regional Analysis of the Syria Conflict, December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/W9edyt; IOM DTM, Displacement Continues across Iraq, January 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/KCi0FH

156 UNHRC, Oral Update of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 16 June 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/mHN4X2

157 HRW, Iraq: ISIS, Militias Feed Cycle of Abuses, 2 February 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/JVPW5p

158 UNWRA, UNRWA condemns placement of rockets, for a second time, in one of its schools, 22 July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/XV3PqG; UNSC, UN envoy urges parties to break 'deadlock of violence and retaliation', 18 August 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/5GjyAz

159 Oxfam, Crisis in Gaza, July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/yh1VsZ

160 OHCHR, Oral Update of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 16 June 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/7ul4Or; HRW, Syria: Barrage of Barrel Bombs, 30 July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/WOV9re

161 ECHO, Syria Crisis, 6 March 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/Uzz6D7

162 UNWRA, The crisis in Yarmouk Camp, 26 28 December 2014, 28 December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/ioDgeU; SNAP, Regional Analysis of the Syria Conflict, December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/IPLcVw

163 IRIN,Yemen IDPs mull return to Amran after ceasefire, 31 July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/sGnI3A

164 MSNA, Syria Multi-sectoral Needs Assessment, October 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/FkrBje

165 UNICEF, Situation Analysis of Children in Yemen 2014, June 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/z5ujwn

166 UNCT, Internally displaced children in Iraq are at high risk of Polio and Measles outbreak, 2 December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/XXhUCa

167 IRIN, Libya health care on life support, 2 September 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/UwF48l; IFRC, Libyan Red Crescent Society continues aid operations as fighting intensifies, 11 November 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/Jr8icV

168 IASC, Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons, April 2010, available at: http://goo.gl/iCgAE3

169 UN General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, 13 January 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/XpQ5ha

170 ESCWA, The National Agenda for the Future of Syria, 2012, available at: http://goo.gl/KYqZQV; USAID, Syria Complex Emergency factsheet, 12 April 2013, available at: http://goo.gl/aoIgW4

171 Haaretz, Red Cross stops providing emergency tents to Palestinians in Jordan Valley, 6 February 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/0rEi6q

172 UN, Security Council Unanimously Adopts Resolution 2139 (2013), 22 February 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/sHaxbe

173 IRIN, Selective treatment for IDPs in Kurdistan, 16 July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/HUKABi

174 UNSMIL/OHCHR, Overview of Violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law during the Ongoing Violence in Libya, 4 September 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/e474Qz

175 OCHA, Financial Tracking Service Yemen, 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/AzTnBa

176 WFP, Funding Shortfall Forces WFP To Announce Cutbacks To Syrian Food Assistance Operation, 18 September 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/KBuP1N