Nearly 400,000 Malians have been displaced by the ongoing war in the country, according to new figures from the United Nations, with 147,000 have fled abroad and another 229,000 having been displaced from central towns and leaving as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees warned last week of the possibility that the French invasion could spark a mass exodus of refugees inside Mali, saying that an additional 700,000 could be displaced in the near future.
Central and Northern Mali, where much of the fighting is taking place, are already some of the most poverty-ridden places on the planet, and the displaced don’t necessarily have much to bring with them, putting them under threat to starvation in the near term.
So far there has been little international attention paid to the displaced, with France trying to center everyone’s focus on escalating the war as much as possible and as quickly as possible. With poor nations like Mauritania already struggling to house tens of thousands of people in refugee camps, the situation could quickly go from bad to worse if that number spikes.