Population Displacement: An Overview

The grave problem of population displacement is caused mainly by development projects, conflicts and natural disasters. Though development projects can bring enormous benefits to society, they also impose far-reaching consequences, which are often borne by the most disadvantaged lot of people. The development displacees can suffer as severely as those displaced either internally or internationally by natural disasters or conflict and violence. The gravity of displacement issue is explicit in quantifications made by different agencies. The forced population displacement is always crisis-prone, even when necessary as part of broad and beneficial development programs. The affected people get profoundly disrupted culturally as well as socio-economically. Displacement often dismantles people’s existing modes of production, disrupts social networks, causes the impoverishment of many of those uprooted, threatens their cultural identity, and increases the risks of epidemics and health problems. This book is an attempt to illustrate the principal causes, contexts, and consequences of population displacement around the world.