Abstract

The growing forced displacement in West Africa, within and across the borders of countries, is a direct consequence of the increasing threat to the lives of millions of people due to coup d’états fuelled by state and non-state actors. Policy challenges; principles and practice of asylum; insecurity in refugee-populated areas; and return and reintegration of displaced people form the thick of the predicaments faced by refugees as well as internally displaced people in West Africa. West Africa is experiencing another spree of forced displacement after the array of civil wars and military coups that broke out in Mali (2020), Niger (2021 and 2023), Chad (2021), Guinea (2021), Sudan (2021), Burkina Faso (2022). The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s report on internal displacement in West Africa (2006) cited that the total number of IDPs in West Africa may be a little over 1 million at this point but there lies potential for massive forced displacement in the region. This research paper aims to address the predicaments faced by the victims of forced displacement in West Africa using a modular framework. Lack of acceptance in host communities and social networks fear and uncertainty of not being able to return home, infrastructural deficits, lack of economic opportunities and human rights abuses are the major heads that lay the ground for the predictive modelling. The latter, in turn, would be useful for determining the incidence of conflict-induced forced displacement in West Africa and the consequences faced by the displaced population.

Keywords