GENEVA: The Himalayan kingdom of Nepal could slide into a major humanitarian crisis unless outside powers help government and Maoist rebels put an end to their long civil conflict, a senior UN official said on Wednesday. Denis McNamara of the world body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told a news conference the decade-long fighting had driven up to 200,000 people from their homes.

“These people are caught in the middle of a nasty internal conflict and are left without basic support or protection,” said McNamara, who heads OCHA’s division focussing on the problems of the internally-displaced in civil conflicts around the world.

“It is not yet a humanitarian crisis on the magnitude of (Sudan’s) Darfur, but a pre-crisis, and if there is no action by governments, it may become a major humanitarian crisis....

“What is needed is sustained political action by the regional powers and others.”

Internally displaced, or IDPs, is the term used by the UN to distinguish people fleeing their homes, but staying inside their country, from refugees — defined under international law as people who have fled across borders to other countries.

McNamara, who spent a week in Nepal in mid-April, said it was impossible to establish the exact number of IDPs in the country, where Gyanendra sacked the government and imposed a state of emergency on February 1.

But the long-serving UN humanitarian official said OCHA accepted estimates by the Norwegian Refugee Council that between 100,000 and 200,000 were displaced in Nepal as a direct or indirect consequence of the conflict.

“They are living on the edge of towns, on the fringes of forests, relying on the help of already very poor people — the poor living on top of the poor,” said McNamara, who spoke to many IDPs during his visit.

McNamara said OCHA hoped to step up humanitarian programmes involving other UN agencies and international non-governmental organisations, or NGOs. But the Nepalese government was allowing NGOs to deploy only one foreign staffer in the country each.—Reuters