MAGUINDANAO, Philippines (AlertNet) - On the side of the highway, neat rows of thatch-roofed huts patched with orange and blue tarpaulin bake in the sun.

There are few trees and even fewer shaded areas. It's not much better inside the rickety houses, built so close the stifling heat envelops you from all directions.

Welcome to the Elian Annex evacuation centre in Datu Saudi Ampatuan municipality in the southern Philippines province of Maguindanao. The official blue cards of the 280 plus families living here say "returned", but the reality is different.

"We are still here because we're worried about safety," said one man in his 40s in a blue T-shirt, who like his neighbours fled the fighting between Muslim insurgents and government forces in 2008. "The government wants us to go home but MILF (the Moro Islamic Liberation Front) has not said it is safe to go back."

The story is the same in other roadside evacuation centres - the official term for camps for internally displaced people (IDP) - in Maguindanao, one of the provinces worst affected by the fighting in the southern region of Mindanao, which uprooted around 600,000 people, according to a report last May from the Norwegian Refugee Council. Globally, this displacement was the biggest in 2008, exceeding Sudan and Congo.

There has been no fresh fighting since July when a fragile truce was struck. Yet, according to the local government, over 16,000 families (around 100,000 people) remain displaced in 52 evacuation centres.

STUCK IN LIMBO

Many of the displaced told me they want to go home. "Life is difficult here and water is far," said one. But they are scared and unsure.

Either they are unaware of the ceasefire, or are still waiting for a guarantee of security from the government or the rebels. Others fear the "armed men" - well-equipped and powerful private militia aligned to political warlords, as well as rogue soldiers and insurgents - who turn up in their villages unannounced.

Ahead of elections in May, there are also concerns over violence between rival politicians and their supporters.

Many of those still uprooted by the conflict can't go home because their houses have been burned down or damaged. Most have few possessions left and no way to make a living. The lucky few whose farms are still intact tend them during the day, but in the evenings everyone congregates at the camp where they feel safer.

The displaced come mainly from "barangays" (the Filipino term for the smallest administration division) located inland, far from main roads, and there is no transport - making it hard for them to flee again in the event of another bout of fighting.

In a word, they are stuck.

Even those who want to resettle can't until they can build a home for themselves or are allocated one of the one-room houses the government is providing for IDPs who prefer to stay put.

A third of the 3,300 planned shelters have been built so far, according to a government official who declined to be named.

POVERTY AMID NATURAL RICHES

It may be safer in camps but life is pretty harsh. Their relatively small populations of a few hundred to a few thousand people help prevent disease outbreaks. But they are hot, dusty places, ill-equipped to meet water and sanitation needs.

Zoraida Kindo, a 23-year-old mother, shares her tarpaulin-walled shelter with three other families at an evacuation centre in Datu Odin Sinsuat municipality. Four women sleep inside while nine kids pack the verandah like sardines. The men sleep in a separate tent.

With limited income options, the IDPs rely partly on aid agencies and partly on whatever money they can drum up from driving tricycles, washing clothes and selling produce from their fruit and vegetable gardens.

But for the people of Mindanao, a hard life is nothing new, despite the region's wealth of natural resources.

"There's underlying chronic food insecurity in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao," Stephen Anderson, country director for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), told AlertNet.

"Most people derive their livelihood from fishing and farming," he said. "A large proportion of these people do not actually own land, and usually keep only 10 to 20 percent of their harvest, while the rest has to be given to their land owner."

The Liguasan Marsh straddling Maguindanao and two other provinces is said to hold natural gas reserves worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Experts say the soil is fertile and the region is protected from storm surges, unlike other parts of the Philippines.

However, decades of under-investment, large-scale corruption and a constant cycle of violence have resulted in the impoverishment of parts of Mindanao. Maguindanao, for example, is one of the country's worst-performing regions in terms of life expectancy (57.6 years) and annual per capita income (15,681 pesos or $340), according to the latest report from the United Nations Development Programme.

Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.