Strategies are needed to address the special assistance and protection concerns of internally displaced women and children. In this report some of the serious assistance and protection problems have been described and several recommendations have been made for ameliorating their plight. Although most of the internally displaced are women and children, little attention has been paid to documenting the particular abuses to which they have been subjected or developing strategies for remedying their situation. Nor has sufficient attention been paid to the difficulties faced by women heads-of-household. Their need to become economically self-supporting in order to provide for their families should be the object of special training and income-generating programmes and strategies. Moreover, by becoming more self-reliant, they will be in a better position to mitigate the effects of displacement on their families and communities. While it is important that programmes of UNICEF, UN IFEM and NGOs seek to reduce the special vulnerabilities of women and children, a great deal more attention should be paid to developing strategies for addressing their assistance, protection and development needs in situations of internal displacement.