4.4. Refugees, former refugees, and the internally displaced The civil wars seen in West Africa since independence have seen massive outflows of refugees from the countries concerned, starting from the Biafran war in Nigeria, 1966-70. The conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire during the 1990s and 2000s saw major refugee flows from each of those countries to the other, and to other neighbouring states, notably Guinea and Ghana. Conflict in northern Mali and Niger saw outflows of refugees during the 1990s, and resumed with wider impact with the resurgence of the rebellion in Mali during 2012. The recent outbreak of violence from the Boko Haram group in north-eastern Nigeria has seen refugees fleeing to Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Several thousand people of West African origin resident in the Central African Republic have fled violence in that country during 2013 and 2014, although the majority of refugees are sheltering in neighbouring countries. At the end of 2013, it was estimated that there were approximately 240,000 refugees in West Africa; as well as a total of 3.3 million internally displaced in Nigeria by violence since 2010, up to a quarter of a million internally displaced persons in Mali, and lower figures for some other countries in the region.189 Among the many difficulties of those affected by conflict, whether or not they cross an international border, are the loss or destruction both of personal documents and of government archives recording their issue. In the Ivorian conflict, where access to documentation was one of the key issues in dispute, civil registration records were in some cases deliberately targeted for destruction; in the Casamance region of Senegal records have also been burnt in some places. Reconstructing official databases is one of the many difficult and costly tasks that must be undertaken when peace is restored. Refugees registered with UNHCR usually receive both a UN document and a document issued by a national refugee agency recognising their refugee status, which state their country of nationality (or indicate that they are stateless, if that is the case). For those refugees who return home within a few years such documentation is usually sufficient to provide them both with a legal status in their country of refuge and with proof of nationality on return (though often not enough to protect them from harassment by security forces in the country of refuge who see any document that is not a national identity document as an excuse to shake someone down for money). Children born in the country of refugee parents may face more difficulties in establishing their nationality, depending on whether and how their birth was registered. In addition, there are those who fled into a neighbouring country and never registered as refugees (as is common within the ECOWAS space), as well as those whose asylum applications are rejected but are not deported (a common situation in Nigeria, for example) and thus remain outside their country of origin. Those who do not cross an international border may in some ways be even worse affected by lack of documents, since they are much less likely to be registered by an international or national agency at 185 Copy of letter dated 23 may 2014 addressed to UNHCR in possession of author. Interviews with stranded Central African-Nigeriens, Niamey, May 2014. 187 For Mali, see Françoise Wasservogel « Migration, conflits, évacuation d’urgence, réinstallation au pays » MaliActu, 25 February 2014 http://maliactu.net/migration-conflits-evacuation-durgence-reinstallation-aupays/ accessed 01 May 2014. 188 Interview IOM Conakry, July 2014. 189 War’s Human Cost: Global Trends Report 2013, UNHCR, June 2014 ; Global Overview 2014: People internally displaced by conflict and violence, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Norwegian Refugee Council, May 2014. The Nigerian National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons published official figures for the first time in 2013. 186 57