Forgotten refugees and other displaced populations.

COLOMBIA; CONGO (Democratic Republic); SIERRA Leone; SUDAN; AFRICA

The wars in Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003 have focused the world's attention and siphoned much funding away from other humanitarian crises. Emergencies such as those in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and southern Sudan are equally or more serious in respect of human suffering and lives lost. In 2002, many refugee programs, especially in Africa, were forced to cut up to a third of their budgets, with serious consequences in their capacity to provide basic life- saving services. The 1991 influx of Bhutanese refugees into Nepal reportedly began because of strict enforcement of citizenship by authorities to preserve Bhutan's Buddhist character; many Nepali-speaking Hindu Bhutanese were forced to leave. In South Africa, 76 000 people of concern to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are situated in five major urban centers; 23 600 are recognised refugees and 52 400 are asylum seekers, mainly from Angola, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, DRC, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan.