News Alert C?te dIvoire: IDPs feel "exhausted and forgotten" by the state

* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Between the 8th and 13th June, a series of attacks, allegedly perpetrated by Liberian-based armed groups supporting former President Laurent Gbagbo, have displaced some 13,000 around the axis Taï-Grabo in western Côte d’Ivoire. IDPs, mainly women and children, have found refuge with host families or in camps yet thousands more are thought to remain hiding in forests. Some were reported to have left their homes preventively for fear of new raids. The region has suffered several waves of violence during the past year with many IDPs saying they feel “exhausted and forgotten” by the state. Access to those displaced remains challenging as the region remains insecure and unstable, with often inaccessible roads. Despite this, emergency relief operations are being conducted and an inter-agency evaluation mission was carried out last week to assess the needs of the displaced. About IDMCThe Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) (www.internal-displacement.org) was established by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in 1998, upon the request of the United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC). Monitoring internal displacement caused by conflict, violence, human rights violations and natural disasters in over 50 countries, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) is widely respected as the leading source of information and analysis on internal displacement throughout the world.