World View : Millions Adrift in Their Own Lands : Displaced by disasters, economics and politics, they are a growing problem virtually ignored by the world.

WASHINGTON —  Uprooted by war, forced to flee famine and flood, made homeless by economic and political upheaval, millions of frightened and largely forgotten people are moving across the global landscape, creating a new crisis for the post-Cold War world.

No corner of the world is exempt. In the 1990s, the migrants--the “internally displaced”--can be found in European capitals, remote African villages, Asian industrial sites and the mountains of Latin America.

Unable to seek aid and comfort across national frontiers, the displaced are not refugees in the classic sense. Instead, they are trapped within their own borders, often still exposed to crisis conditions, and usually deemed by the world community to be someone else’s problem. Judy Mayotte, an American relief worker and author, dubs them the “disposable people.”

The dimensions are daunting. While the world is awash with 18 million refugees, the internally displaced now total more than 24 million, according to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and private refugee groups. And their ranks are growing fast.

Over the course of this decade, a total of 200 million to 500 million people are expected to be internally displaced at least temporarily, according to the Washington-based Refugee Policy Group. The pace of growth is far higher than that of refugees or the world population in general.

“The situation of the internally uprooted threatens to become one of the most explosive issues of the coming decades,” said Mahbub ul-Haq, chief adviser to the U.N. Development Program. “It’s a sleeper issue of the 21st Century.”

Although an awesome problem, it is not a new one. The displaced have been a problem throughout history.

In this century, a prominent legacy of both world wars was the displacement of huge populations across both Europe and Asia.

Now, in the post-Cold War period, the situation is intense because most countries are increasingly reluctant to take in foreigners as refugees.

In a world devoid of ideological competition, there are no political points to score, only a physical and social burden and indefinite expense to absorb. The result is burgeoning numbers who can’t stay at home but who also can’t cross borders. So they drift within their countries, looking for safety and sustenance.

“Many would be refugees if they could, but today they don’t have that opportunity. Barriers are going up and doors are closing all over the world,” said Bill Frelick, senior policy analyst at the U.S. Committee for Refugees.

Afghanistan, past and present, is illustrative. After the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation, 3 million Afghans fled to Pakistan, which was encouraged by hefty Western aid to take them in. Most remained for a decade, until the Soviet army withdrew from their homeland in 1989.

Now Afghanistan is aflame again in a civil war among political and religious factions that broke out at the first of the year. Once again, masses of Afghans are fleeing contested areas. But this time, without the Cold War factor that led to Western support, Pakistan has closed the door. It now requires travel documents, a tactic designed to keep asylum-seekers out, Frelick said. And no foreign donors are rushing in to help. While their factional leaders were once welcomed at the White House, war-weary Afghans are now virtually forgotten in Western capitals.

But Western disinterest does not make the problem go away. The displaced are a product of many factors. The projected tenfold or twentyfold increase will be influenced mainly by the breakdown of nations and changes in the nature of conflict, authorities say.

Where wars once were largely conducted between states, they now increasingly take place within a single country. Internal war or unrest, for example, has produced the 10 biggest crises worldwide: in Sudan, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, the Philippines, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Liberia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan and Somalia.

Urban warfare, aerial bombardment, long-range artillery and changes in strategy have also shifted front lines from rural to densely populated settings. Wars once tended to be fought in the countryside by uniformed armies. But today, ordinary people are under fire, and increasingly they are taking flight. In World War I, 5% of casualties were civilian. The figure increased to more than 50% in World War II, according to statistics of the Refugee Policy Group. In the 1990s, up to 90% of casualties in war-torn areas are civilian.

Bosnia is the most vivid case. The two-year-long Serbian siege of Sarajevo and fighting elsewhere among Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats have produced 2.7 million displaced people within the embattled little country--more than twice the 1.2 million Bosnian refugees who have fled to neighboring states, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees has reported.

War is not the only factor driving people from their homes. Others, for instance, are natural or man-made disasters, which create the so-called eco-migrants, or environmentally displaced people.

They range from Ukrainians who fled the nuclear fallout at the Chernobyl reactor to Bangladeshis forced from their homes by floods and Kazakhs leaving the Aral Sea region as its waters dry up.

In India, an average of 25 million people are affected every year by floods, recurrent disasters that also eliminate 15 million acres of crops, according to Michelle Schwartz of the Natural Heritage Institute in San Francisco. Temporary displacement is typical in flood season.

But the increase in the environmentally displaced is more often linked to human factors. High birth rates combined with land overuse and erosion, for example, are expected to put up to 135 million people at risk over the next few decades in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the U.N. Population Fund reports.

“People keep going to marginal lands, and once those lands are degraded, they’re forced to even more marginal lands. It’s a problem that feeds on itself,” Schwartz said.

Even attempts to better conditions can backfire and displace more people. The World Bank estimated that about 100 bank-financed development projects displaced at least 1.6 million people between 1980 and 1990. Environmental groups give much higher estimates.

“Development projects like the Narmada dam project in India and the Three Gorges dam project in China--two of the largest irrigation projects in the world--could displace several million over the next few years,” Schwartz said. “These are only a small fraction of development activities worldwide that will cause displacement over the next decade.”

Industrial disasters have also displaced significant numbers. The 1984 toxic chemical release at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown episode together killed several thousand people, injured tens of thousands--and at least temporarily displaced hundreds of thousands.

Whatever the cause, the plight of the displaced is usually worse than that of refugees. No international agencies are officially mandated to deal with displaced people. And no legal conventions delineate their rights or provide mechanisms and standards for their care. In contrast, the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and a 1967 U.N. protocol define and offer the right of protection to refugees worldwide.

“Even refugee people did not look at the displaced as a problem unto itself as recently as 1989 and 1990,” relief worker Mayotte said. “A refugee is someone who is defined and recognized. But because the world is built around nation-states and sovereignty is sacrosanct, the world is not supposed to meddle in the affairs of countries with large numbers of displaced.

“It’s like a domestic violence case. If the husband or boyfriend says nothing’s going on here, then the authorities have to go away.”

The displaced have no one to demand accountability on their behalf or to turn to for diplomatic or political intervention. They generally have to depend on the very governments or environments responsible for the conditions that have forced them from their homes. Internationally, their plight often goes virtually unnoticed, except among humanitarian agencies.

“It’s one of the biggest gaps in the existing international machinery,” said Lionel Rosenblatt, executive director of Refugees International.

“We find ourselves spending more and more time on the displaced problem and how to get some kind of response. There needs to be an international conference to devise some mechanism.”

Outside intervention is complicated--and limited--by the issue of sovereignty. It risks running into the political, military or environmental flash point that triggered an exodus, and having to solve that problem before getting disentangled.

Governments facing a refugee influx generally welcome outside help. But states facing a problem with their own displaced can feel threatened when outsiders assume the humanitarian responsibilities, possibly portraying the regime in a bad light.

The United States and the United Nations could intervene in Somalia with a free hand only because the state had broken down completely. But normally a recalcitrant government draws a line at outside intervention.

“We have the right of initiative in contacting governments in the case of internal conflict to ask for Red Cross intervention. But the government has the right to refuse. That’s a problem a lot of organizations face,” said Francoise Derron, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. “Governments say we’re interfering in internal affairs.”

In Sudan, the Islamic government in Khartoum and southern rebels have abused millions of the displaced during the civil war--using them as shields or as pawns to get food aid for troops. It was in Sudan that the risks of relief work caught up with Mayotte, a former nun and Emmy-winning television producer who had also worked in Cambodia, Thailand, Pakistan, India, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Guatemala, a list that illustrates the problems.

Last September, while she was working on a film project about Sudan’s nearly 5 million displaced, a 200-pound bag of sorghum fell from a relief plane and struck her leg. She lost the leg and almost her life.

“I’d go back to Africa tomorrow if I had a leg,” she said last month in Washington. “And I will,” added Mayotte, who’s awaiting further surgery so she can be fitted for a prosthetic.

As Mayotte and other members of the international relief community have long argued, the problem is not supplies or the willingness to deliver them. It’s getting them there.

“With the displaced, there’s no guarantee relief agencies will get access to them. Renegade governments and rebels often won’t allow humanitarian organizations to have access to them,” said Barbara Francis, U.S. spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency.

An exception followed the 1991 Gulf War when more than a million Iraqi Kurds fled to Turkey and Iran after their uprising against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weakened regime failed. Iran took in more than half a million Kurds, but Turkey was less hospitable, leaving hundreds of thousands stranded in the snow-covered mountains of northern Iraq.

Media attention to starvation and death among the Kurds prompted a U.S.-led coalition to launch Operation Provide Comfort in north Iraq, a mission that defied convention by operating in a country without permission. Despite Iraqi protests, the postwar political climate and U.N. resolutions made the mission internationally acceptable.

Provide Comfort has turned out, however, to be an exception in the post-Cold War world.

“It had such international consensus and a commitment of military force. No other situation has that consensus or will,” said Frelick, the U.S. Committee for Refugees analyst.

Provide Comfort also explains international reticence to get involved in many relief operations. Three years later, 1,500 Gulf War coalition troops in Provide Comfort--at a cost so far of hundreds of millions of dollars--are still involved, with no end in sight.

“Initially there was optimism that we’d set a new example in Iraq. Then we had the examples set in Bosnia and Somalia, where we’re basically saying we can’t or don’t want to intervene because of all the difficulties for us,” said Dennis Gallagher, executive director of the Refugee Policy Group. “Now, the international community is reacting to that lack of success. There’s a sense we’re not able to help people inside countries, yet we’re no more interested in letting people move across borders.”

For the displaced, social services such as health and education are also usually nonexistent. Because the displaced are often unwanted populations, they have limited if any opportunities for jobs to support themselves.

In contrast, a host of U.N. and international agencies deal with refugee problems, handling everything from identity papers to schooling. The 1994 budget of the U.N. refugee agency is $1.2 billion--double the 1990 budget--while other relief groups spend millions more worldwide.

But millions of the displaced do not even have the benefit of makeshift camps for shelter and relief aid. In Bosnia, they may be displaced only a few blocks from home to a crowded basement garage without electricity, water or heat. In Sudan and Somalia, they may be forced to live in open country. In Peru, they may form illegal and unserviced squatter camps.

More than 2 million displaced Sudanese have wandered into Khartoum, Port Sudan and several other cities from the famine-devastated countryside since 1986. There, they have “poked sticks into the dry ground and covered them with discarded burlap grain bags, empty cardboard boxes, or whatever refuse they could find in the surrounding garbage dumps, and called it shelter,” Mayotte writes in her book, “Disposable People.”

“Many of the highest death rates ever recorded are among the internally displaced, up to 20 times the rates that are normal even for very poor populations say in Bangladesh or Sierra Leone,” according to a Refugee Policy Group report.

In the 1980s, as many as 1.2 million displaced Sudanese are believed to have died because of the combined effects of conflict and famine. In the 1990s, entire villages in Somalia have been depopulated as up to half the residents died of malnutrition and disease and the other half fled.

“Rarely does food or nutrition assistance arrive in time to support the needs of the internally displaced when they need it the most,” the Refugee Policy Group reports.

Within their own countries, neighboring communities block integration because the displaced are considered political enemies or rivals for limited resources, said Derron, the Red Cross spokeswoman.

In Angola, 2 million people--almost one out of four--have been displaced by Africa’s deadliest war. Because the conflict breaks down along tribal lines, the displaced rarely find refuge on the other side.

The same is true in the strife between Sri Lanka’s predominantly Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalese and for Georgia’s Ossetian and Abkhazian minorities. Sri Lanka has 600,000 displaced; Georgia has 250,000.

An exception is Tajikistan, the poorest former Soviet republic, where tens of thousands fled after fighting erupted between the holdover Communist government and pro-democracy forces in 1992. By 1993, the total displaced exceeded 500,000. Many crossed into Afghanistan, but most stayed inside Tajik borders.

The U.N. refugee agency became involved after government troops prevailed, and fighting died down. While improving the domestic situation so refugees would return, the agency also aided the Tajik displaced with food and plastic sheeting to help them through the winter. It then helped them return to their homes.

As a result, the number of displaced dropped to 30,000. The crisis has been comparatively short-lived and far less of a local or regional problem than it could have been, according to David Nassar, a Tajik specialist at Refugees International.

“If it weren’t for the (U.N. refugee agency’s) agenda being informally expanded, then there’d be no one to take care of these people. Most displaced don’t have that kind of protection,” said Francis, the agency spokesman. The agency had the authorization of the Tajik government to enter the country and provide aid.

Based on the agency’s intervention in Tajikistan, the former Yugoslavia, Azerbaijan and northern Sri Lanka, the U.N. General Assembly last December supported the agency’s efforts to help the displaced, especially in cases related to refugee problems. But the General Assembly’s support still falls far short of a formal mandate and funding for the displaced.

International aid is limited also by the “burnout factor,” according to George High, director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. “When you have one international disaster after another, they challenge the capability of relief organizations to handle them all. In turn, people get tired of giving money to bail out one crisis after another.”

If no international mechanism or formula is found to deal with the displaced, U.S. officials and world relief agencies warn, the problem will continue to snowball.

“The international community is ill-equipped to tackle the magnitude of the problem. We’re equipped only to deal with immediate problems involving refugees,” a U.S. official conceded.

“To find solutions for displaced people, someone has to sort out problems ranging from human rights and social justice to economic equity. The international community will also have to deal with the sovereignty problem and finally delineate at what juncture who has what rights.

“At the moment,” he added, “we’re treading water while a tidal wave is building.”

Tallying the Human Toll

There were more than 24 million displaced persons in 1993, according to U.N. estimates. The top 10 nations:

Sudan: 4,000,000*

South Africa: 4,000,000

Mozambique: 2,000,000

Angola: 2,000,000

Bosnia: 1,300,000

Liberia: 1,000,000

Philippines: 1,000,000

Ethiopia: 800,000

Azerbaijan: 800,000

Somalia: 700,000

* Estimates range from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000

Source: U.S. Committee for Refugees

World War II Displacements

One of the greatest mass movements in human history was caused by World War II. Streets throughout Europe were crowded with millions of refugees or displaced persons, forced to flee because of bombing, political decrees or newly altered borders.

BEFORE THE WAR: France coordinated a movement from populated areas near the German border.

DURING THE WAR: Civilians migrated from cities to avoid bombing raids. In France, by harassing them at some points and ignoring them at others, the Germans cleverly herded the weary escapees onto the main roads, so that they hampered the progress of the French troops.

* One-fifth of the housing destroyed during WWII was lost to “structure evacuation,” or smashing down homes and other buildings for firebreaks. Broad strips of open land surrounded factories, transport centers and military bases where houses and shops once stood, leaving more than 3.5 million city residents homeless.

* Hitler forced about 600,000 Germans to return to their homeland through agreements with other European nations. And residents of eastern Germany moved west when the Soviet Union invaded.

* In Russia, Stalin allowed Germans to leave areas annexed by the Soviet Union but later deported to Siberia those remaining on the Volga River along with some minority groups native to the Soviet Union.

AFTER THE WAR: The Soviet Union expelled Finns and Germans from newly annexed territories. They exchanged natives of areas annexed from Poland for Russians still remaining in Poland.

* Refugees who had fled their country to escape Axis troops returned home, although their houses were not always left standing.

* Some people captured during the war chose to remain in Germany rather than return to homelands that had been acquired by the Soviet Union. East Germans were forced to leave ancestral homelands when Hitler lost the war.

Sources: Historical Encyclopedia of World War II and the Historical Guide to World War IIResearched by ANN GRIFFITH