03/12/2006

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Below is an excerpt of an article from Catholic Online:

The Vatican called for a “massive effort” representing an “overall renewed commitment” of the international community to deal with the millions of displaced Africans and to prevent the spread of nation destabilizing throughout the continent.

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Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, a Vatican representative to U.N. and humanitarian organizations based in Geneva, made the appeal to a meeting of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees standing committee March 8 here.

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“The process of displacement continues even as we talk about refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) in Africa,” Archbishop Tomasi said.

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The nuncio pointed, an example of the social dislocation in Africa, to the more than 1.5 million displaced in the Acholiland region of northern Uganda.

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According to Refugees International, a Washington-based humanitarian assistance and advocacy group for displaced people around the world, 1.7 million internally displaced persons in northern Uganda’s Acholiland region “live in miserable camps with limited access” to basic services including water, sanitation facilities and health care. “Despite improvements in the past year, the humanitarian response in northern Uganda is failing,” the agency said. “The crisis is one of the most severe in the world.”