West Africa: Humanitarian overview

According to the latest information gathered from OCHA offices in the sub-region, some 2,228,846 civilians from Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Mali and Burkina Faso are affected by the recent conflicts. Of these two million people or so, some 18% are refugees, 47% are IDPs and 35% returnees.
It should also be noted that while over 39% live in camps, hence being totally dependent on humanitarian assistance, close to 61% of these affected people live outside the camps, meaning that their livelihood depends mainly upon the coping capacity of host communities.

As an illustration, in Guinea, an estimated 78,845 refugees (43% of the total refugee population) live outside the camps, while all IDPs in CDI (550,000) survive among host communities and over 70% (350,000) of Liberian IDPs live in camps.

This brief overview underlines the complexity and diversity of humanitarian situations across the sub-region; advocates for continuing life-sustaining assistance; and, also sheds some new light on the critical issues of funding support to host communities that bear most of the cost of providing safe heaven to hundred of thousand of people.

In West Africa, strengthening coping capacity of host communities has progressively become one of the key tensions avoidance approach hence, conflict prevention measures. This emerging need must be given priority consideration by the donors community to avoid further deterioration of the overall socio-economic environment which could in turn lead to further spread of instability and violent confrontations across the sub-region.

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Dakar, Senegal