It is the morning of the month for the war-displaced people of Kasseke 3 camp in Huambo, central Angola. Eight thousand families, representing over 38,000 men, women and children, stand in the hot sun queuing for their food, collecting on this one day the entire month's ration of corn, oil and salt.

All have been displaced from their original homes at least once over the last 26 years. Each family's identity has been reduced to a number on a registration card. Each individual has a story to tell, typically including terror when fleeing UNITA rebel attacks, desperation when in search of food, or sheer exhaustion from being moved from camp to camp.

This is the life of just some of the two million Angolans who have been displaced by the protracted civil war that has cursed this otherwise rich and beautiful African country over the past three decades. These are the "invisible" people of Angola - largely forgotten, existing outside that narrow margin that may be called "civil society" - who travel back and forth, again and again, between village, city and camp. On her first visit to Angola recently, Glenys Kinnock MEP, armed with the latest reports and statistics, was shocked at the devastation. "It is shocking to know the awful humanitarian facts of Angola, but to see them for oneself is utterly disturbing." Despite the Angolan government's confused but confident assertions that the war is over, almost over, or at least under control, these mostly rural people continue to be displaced. Their movements perhaps act as a more accurate reading of the state of the war than any national message of confidence.

"This one family have been forced to flee their home not once, not twice, but three times over the last 20 years," says Kinnock after talking with Maria, a 34-year-old lives at the Kasseke 3 camp. "This mother has had seven children, of whom one has died and all but one are severely malnourished. The misery she and her children live in is difficult to describe."

Last year the UN's agency for children, UNICEF, declared Angola "the worst place in the world to be a child". It estimated that one in every three children died before the age of five. "This is the kind of statistic that is unbearable to think of, but I have seen the reality of this in the last few days," says Kinnock after her tour of Huambo, Lobito and the capital, Luanda. "These families and their children are living on as little as one meal a day."

The security situation continues to deteriorate across the country, particularly in the northern province of Uige and the northern parts of Malanje. Far from being a defeated force, UNITA appears to be stepping up its guerrilla activities. In Huambo's central highlands, displaced people are "pouring" into its capital, Huambo, according to the UN's World Food Programme, which is responsible for feeding more than 2,000 people in Huambo alone.

"The movement of these displaced people - whether flooding the camps in their thousands on a daily basis, being moved to another camp by the local authority, or trying to return home to their villages - is the most reliable barometer of the state of the war," says one diplomatic source. "We have seen many trying to return home over the last few months as the government stepped up its military gains over UNITA territories, but they are flocking back to the camps as the guerrilla war gathers pace once again."

Of the 38,000 at Kasseke 3, 22,000 were moved from another camp at the end of January by Huambo's city authorities. The reason for the forced move, according to vice-governor Augustino Djaka, was that the mortality rate of 120 per month due to "poor living conditions" was too much. The other 16,000 have been flowing in since the beginning of the year as the security situation in the province disintegrates. "In a country as rich as this, the land itself is more than able to provide, and yet there are huge problems related to malnutrition," says Kinnock. "Access to medication is also non-existent. These people literally have nothing." With current sanitation provisions at Kasseke 3 for just 5,000 people and a national rate of one doctor for every 20,000 people, one wonders how the city authorities can prevent the mortality rate from rising in the new camps.

According to a recent nutrition survey carried out by the UK's Save the Children Fund in Huambo, in January the levels of malnutrition among both the displaced and resident population were severe enough to be rated as a famine. However, because the people either live behind the closed doors of their homes or a squatted house, have access to markets, or are clumped together in camps, the "famine" is simply not visible. Food has become such a scarce and valuable commodity that, reportedly, some of the recent UNITA attacks on civilian villages have been motivated by hunger among soldiers. Market prices weren't helped by the recent 1,600 per cent price hike for fuel, which has intensified the already inflated economics of war.

The UN's mandate for the protection and rights of displaced people is rather more vague than for refugees, the latter being defined by the fact that they have crossed an international border. But enshrined in the Geneva Convention, and agreed to by almost every state of the world, is the international protection of civilians that includes access to water and food and the means to grow food. "The (Angolan) government and the international community have a responsibility to ensure that these people have a secure future by empowering them with food, health, and education," says Kinnock, "whether the situation on the ground is considered to be an emergency or not.

"It is important that we are all prepared for peace, and the European Union's delegation in Angola is assuming that before long this will be the case and the people will return home. This implies that the land is demined, the roads are safe, and the villages secure. Only then will the people be able to go home and rebuild their society."

War Brought Us Here, the Save the Children report on the plight of 13 million "internally displaced children" (forced from their homes by war throughout the world, but stranded within the borders of their own country) is part of the Save the Children Fund's Forgotten Children campaign. Copies of the report can be obtained by phoning 0044-20-7703-5400