The Philippine government's decades long confrontation with Muslim separatists on the southern island of Mindanao and a second conflict with communist insurgents across the country have left 160,000 dead and displaced up to 2 million people.

• 700,000 uprooted in 2008 fighting
• More than a third of population live in poverty
• Mindanao situation attracts Islamic extremists

The Mindanao conflict first flared in the 1960s when the Muslim minority - known as the Moros - launched an armed struggle for their ancestral homeland in the south.

But the campaign for self-rule is not the only source of bloodshed on Mindanao. There has also been a long Maoist insurgency, violence linked to militant Islamist groups with pan-Asian aspirations, bloody ethnic vendettas, clan wars and banditry.

Fighting escalated in 2008 after a decade-long peace process between the government and rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) collapsed.

Politics and religion aside, much of the violence is fuelled by deep poverty rooted in decades of under-investment.

POPULATION
Philippines (2007)	87.9 million (U.N.)
Mindanao island group	16 million (U.S. Institute of Peace)
RELIGION
Muslim population among Mindanao island group	20 percent (U.S. Institute of Peace)
REFUGEES AND DISPLACEMENT
People displaced in Mindanao (Dec 2007)	120,000 - 300,000 (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre)
Refugees abroad (2005)	465 (UNHCR)
CONFLICT
Number killed in Moro insurgency	120,000 (UNDP)
Number killed in communist insurgency	40,000 (UNDP)