The "main message" from local authorities in Darfur is that the state’s hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) will have to go home "soon", according to relief workers. On 1 July, the Sudanese interior minister and government’s special representative for Darfur, Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Husayn, told reporters in Northern Darfur that it was "most important" to get people to return to their villages. Each state - Darfur region has three - had its own plan of return, he said. But humanitarian workers fear that a forcible mass return of some 1.2 million IDPs in Darfur could result in enormous fatalities.