Armed conflict between the government and non-state armed groups continued to cause internal displacements in the country, a report of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said.
According to the 2014 edition of NRC's annual Global Overview on people internally displaced by conflict, violence and disasters, around 327,000 people in the country fled their homes last year, of which at least 116,000 were still displaced at the end of the year.
Pal Nesse, Senior Adviser on Advocacy and Information of the NRC, said most of the displacement took place in war-torn Mindanao, where conflict and violence are rooted in under-development, poor governance and the marginalization of Muslim and indigenous communities.
"Since 2000, armed conflict in Mindanao has displaced at least 3.5 million people,” the report, released in May this year, said.
In 2013, at least one-third of the 327,000 displaced people fled from their homes in Zamboanga City when heavy fighting between the government and a faction of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) ensued.
The Zamboanga City siege also destroyed more than 10,000 homes and displaced around 120,000 people in September 2013, the report said.
Other reasons seen for the ballooning internal displacement of people in the country are the seemingly unending conflict between the government and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and the communist New People’s Army (NPA).
Many of the IDPs documented by the NRC’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) have already returned homes, "but in Zamboanga, around 63,000 were unable to do so because their homes had either been destroyed or were in parts of city declared as no return areas prone to disaster."
Aside from conflict and violence, natural hazards or typhoons were also considered other causes of displacement.
In November 8, 2013, over 4 million people were displaced when the monster typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit.
Worst, the NRC report said, many people already displaced by conflict were also affected by the natural disaster, forcing them into secondary displacement.
"Those people living in remote areas have been deprived of humanitarian assistance, pushing them further into poverty," Nesse added.
Last year, NRC marked its 15th year of monitoring displaced people across the globe.
The 12 countries with the highest new displacement as of May 2014 include:
- Syria - 3.5 million
- Democratic Republic of Congo – 1 million
- Central African Republic – 935,000
- Nigeria – 470,500
- Sudan – 470,000
- South Sudan – 383,000
- Philippines – 327,000
- Ethiopia – 178,000
- Colombia – 157,000
- Pakistan – 140,000
- Afghanistan – 124,000
- Mali with 123,000 displaced people.
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