There are an estimated 15 million refugees, internally displaced and other uprooted persons throughout the African continent. UNHCR cares for nearly 4.6 million of them with a regular 2003 budget of nearly $400 million.

Overall, this was a slight increase compared with 4.2 million people the previous year. The agency's assistance peaked in 1994 when it helped seven million refugees, many of whom had fled the Rwandan genocide of that year.

In 2002, more than one million people fled their homes, while an estimated 600,000 refugees and IDPs returned with UNHCR assistance. However, in Angola alone between one million and 1.5 million internally displaced persons also returned home spontaneously.

Africa's largest refugee populations came from the following countries: Burundi 570,000; Sudan 490,000; Angola 421,000; Democratic Republic of the Congo 395,000; and Somalia 357,000.

African countries hosting the largest refugee populations include: Tanzania 690,000; Democratic Republic of the Congo 330,000; Sudan 328,000; Zambia 247,000; Kenya 234,000; and Uganda 217,000.

Since the end of the colonial era, Africa has been the scene of some of the longest and worst global conflicts. Sudan was wracked by civil war between the mainly Muslim north and Animist and Christian south virtually since independence in 1956. An estimated two million people were killed, four million people displaced internally and half a million people fled to neighbouring countries.

Angola suffered a similar war starting in the 1960s. At least one million persons were killed, four million were displaced internally and another half million fled as refugees.

Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo starting in 1998 was described as Africa's first 'World War.' It involved a half dozen armies, reputedly killing between three and five million people either as a direct result of war or because of disease and malnutrition. Two million people fled to nearby neighbourhoods and 300,000 civilians became refugees.

The entire West African region was destabilized after civil war erupted once more in Liberia in 1989. Nearly 70 percent of that country's population, an estimated 2.4 million people, were displaced and 150,000 killed. Neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire, once one of the continent's most stable nations, toppled into civil war in late 2002, displacing up to 800,000 people and forcing 400,000 more to flee the country.

Burundi is one of the world's poorest and smallest countries, but a decade-long conflict there killed more than 200,000 people and produced nearly one million uprooted persons, or nearly 14 percent of the total population

Politically, there were encouraging developments. Following the signing of a peace accord in early 2002, civilians began returning to their homes in Angola and the pace of return was expected to increase in coming months. Tenuous peace deals were signed in Burundi and Congo. Following a decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone, that country continued to stabilize.

Wars and displacement have been fueled by economic and social upheaval. The number of people living in absolute poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to rise from 315 to 404 million in the next 15 years, making the continent the world's poorest region.

Half the population survives on less than one dollar a day, more than 50 percent has no access to clean drinking water and more than two million infants die annually before reaching their first birthday

HIV/AIDS reached epidemic proportions in many countries and in 2001 more than two million died from the disease. Eight million others died from malaria, measles, tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases.

An estimated 40 million Africans in Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Sahel and West Africa face starvation according to the World Food Program.