Senegal: New fighting threatens return of remaining IDPs

Despite the scarcity of information on the numbers, it is estimated that during 2005 more than 65% of the people displaced from their homes in the southern region of Casamance were able to return. This followed the signing in December 2004 of a peace agreement between the Senegalese government and the rebel group Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC) to end a conflict that started in 1982. However, increasing insecurity along the region's northwest border with the Gambia may have prevented some 12,400 other internally displaced people (IDPs) from going home.