the time of displacement, but equally likely to be affected by loss or destruction of their existing documents and the dispersal of community leaders who could vouch for a person’s identity. Displaced children separated from their parents are the most vulnerable of all. A survey conducted by the Danish Refugee Council in May 2013 found that 55% of the internally displaced now living in Mopti, Mali, had no documentation (ID card or birth certificate).190 A representative of persons displaced by the Casamance conflict in Senegal noted that the groups put at risk by lack of documentation were not just the refugees and internally displaced, but also those who lived in zones where civil registration records had been burnt; as well as the children of the rebels themselves, who had never been declared to any authority. His brother, also Senegalese born in Senegal, had become a refugee in Guinea Conakry, where he had married a wife from Guinea Bissau and had children. His children, who consider themselves Senegalese, have no documentation from Senegal, Guinea or Guinea Bissau; they have tried to get documents from Senegal but have not been able to do so. The procedure to obtain a jugement supplétif for late registration of birth (in this case for the children’s father in the first instance) required the physical presence of five people: the person him or herself, both parents (or their death certificates) and two witnesses, which was simply too onerous to achieve. His opinion was that even if the conflict came to an end it would return again if the problems of documentation were not addressed.191 For refugees in a “protracted” situation – defined by UNHCR to mean those who have been in exile for more than five years without immediate prospects for implementation of durable solutions – the question of documentation becomes steadily more difficult.192 In West Africa, UNHCR estimated in 2004 that there were approximately 300,000 people living in a protracted refugee situation, mainly refugees from the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars, but including those expelled from Mauritania in 1989-1990, as well as around 1,000 refugees from Rwanda.193 Since then, under pressure both from donor governments to UNHCR and from some of the countries of origin of the refugees. there have been efforts to resolve some of these protracted situations by invoking the “cessation clauses” from the 1951 Refugee Convention, which set out the situations in which refugee status may properly come to an end. These situations may be based on actions by the refugee him or herself (such as voluntarily returning to the country concerned, or naturalisation in another country), but in cases where the reason for ending refugee status is that the situation in the country of origin has changed sufficiently to make return possible, there is a process for a statement to be made by UNHCR and the authorities of the country in question that, as a group, refugees from that country no longer have a well-founded fear of being persecuted (though individuals may always rebut the presumption in an individual case).194 Since 2010, the cessation clauses have been invoked in Africa by UNHCR and the 190 Cited in Forced Displacement of and Potential Solutions for IDPs and refugees in the Sahel – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania & Niger, UNHCR and Global Program on Forced Displacement of the World Bank, October 2013. 191 Interview with representative of IDPs, Ziguinchor, May 2014. 192 Conclusion on Protracted Refugee Situations, No. 109 (LXI) – 2009, EXCOM Conclusions, 8 December 2009. For a bibliography see http://www.prsproject.org/protracted-refugee-situations/bibliography/, last accessed 3 July 2014. 193 Protracted Refugee Situations, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner’s Programme, EC/54/SC/CRP.14, 10 June 2004; “Implementation of the Comprehensive Strategy for the Rwandan Refugee Situation, including UNHCR's recommendations on the Applicability of the ‘ceased circumstances' Cessation Clauses", UNHCR, 31 December 2011. 194 The Cessation Clauses: Guidelines on their Application, UNHCR, Geneva, April 1999. 58