Still, some general observations can be made. This notwithstanding, by far the largest single element is the rural poor. A second and no less important observation is that the over- whelming majority of the internally displaced are women and their dependent children. This child, emaciated and turned gray from starvation, was among the hundreds of thousands displaced by civil war in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the early 1990s. Photograph by L.Taylor, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Children suffer the most.
Child malnutrition rates as high as 70 percent have been recorded in some mass displacements. Photograph by A. Hollmann, Children living in displaced persons camps usually do not have Office of the UN High Commissioner for access either to adequate health care or education. Often they are Refugees. Displacement often is thought of as a temporary problem, one that will disappear with the return or resettlement of the dis- placed. But some mass displacements have persisted for decades and have not been fully resolved even with the passage from one generation to another.