15th May, 2007

At least a billion more people will be refugees by 2050 as the effects of climate change - floods, drought and famine - swell their numbers of those already displaced by war and natural disasters, according to a report from Christian Aid.

Released to mark Christian Aid Week, the report Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis warns that the new migration - which could dwarf the numbers left as refugees in the wake of World War II - could fuel existing conflicts and create new ones in some of the poorest areas in the world.

It warns that “a world of many more Darfurs is the increasingly likely nightmare scenario” and says that most of those who become refugees will have to remain within the borders of their own countries, often at the mercy of the governments which caused them to flee.

“We believe that forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the developing world,” says the report’s lead author, John Davison.

While acknowledging the major internal migration crises in countries like Sudan, Uganda and Sri Lanka, the report highlights some of the lesser known situations in which their has been a mass relocation of people.

They include Colombia, where people have been forced off their land by years of war and land grabs by palm plantation owners; Burma, where ethnic minority groups are being forcibly displaced to make room for dams and other large-scale developments; and Mali, where declining rainfall has forced people to move to feed their families.

~ www.christianaid.co.uk

- DAVID ADAMS