West Africa: The revolving door of internal displacement in West Africa

When civil war broke out in Liberia at the end of 1989 it triggered an intractable cycle of conflict and displacement that directly affected three other countries and indirectly affected several more. The violence that has ebbed and flowed between Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire - added to the separate conflicts in Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria and Togo - has created an extremely complex situation of displacement, both internally and across borders.