More displacement predicted

If the current situation in Cote d'Ivoire prevails, half a million more people could be displaced over the next two months, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Wednesday. Quoting estimates from UNICEF, OCHA reported that women and children make up 80 percent of the people who could be displaced if the situation did not stabilize. Cote d'Ivoire's immediate neighbours - Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana - would be the main destinations of the displacees. These five countries already host over 250,000 returnees (nationals who have returned home), Ivorian refugees and third-country nationals. However, UN agencies feel the estimates are lower than the real number as thousands cross into neighbouring countries through unofficial entry points. In Cote d'Ivoire, the number of internally displaced people has been put at about 600,000. This, too, is seen by some as a conservative estimate. Western and northern Cote d'Ivoire remain areas of great concern. Western Cote d'Ivoire, extending roughly from the coastal town of Tabou to the mountain towns of Man, Danane and Touba, remains highly insecure because of continued fighting between armed elements and the national army. The presence of "Liberian militias running rampant and drugged kids committing every kind of atrocity possible" has rendered the area a "no-go" zone, the UN Humanitarian Envoy for the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, Carolyn McAskie, told the press in Geneva on Wednesday. There is also concern about the north. "The complete interruption of all administrative functions, including banking, in rebel-held areas since September 2002 is causing a crippling lack of cash flow, especially in the north, and the continued paralysis of health services," OCHA said on Wednesday. McAskie went a step further, saying that three or four million people were left beyond the ceasefire line where government did "not exist". "These people had no access to schools, health care or social services," she said on Wednesday. "The health situation was deteriorating rapidly and communicable diseases, particularly yellow fever, meningitis and cholera, were on the rise." An anti-polio campaign had ground to a halt, she added. A joint FAO/WHO/WFP mission has predicted that the food security situation could become alarming in as little as two months unless a peaceful solution to the crisis is found. McAskie left Mali on Monday at the end of a mission that enabled her to take stock of the impact of the Ivorian crisis. She was expected to present a report to the UN Secretary-General - mainly on the humanitarian situation, but also including recommendations in other areas due to the complexity of a crisis brought on, among other things, by deep-seated social, economic and political factors.