The 1951 Refugee Convention did not apply to internally displaced persons. Principal responsibility for providing for the well-being and security of IDPs rested with their governments but most were unable or unwilling to assume this obligation. Nor did international organisations…
The Oslo conference reaffirmed the Guiding Principles as an important framework for upholding the rights of IDPs and was encouraged by reports from a number of states that the Principles had been incorporated into national laws and policies and that…
The Guiding Principles were designed to reaffirm existing international human rights law and international humanitarian law – and to “clarify grey areas” and “address gaps”.[1] They were also meant to develop the law, rather than merely reflect existing law, but…
The late Sérgio Vieira de Mello identified four ways the Guiding Principles might benefit IDPs: raising awareness of their needs; mobilising support within the humanitarian community; helping field staff find solutions; and assisting governments to provide for IDPs’ security and…
As FMR’s recent issue on Burma outlined[1], large-scale internal displacement has been a reality in Burma since squatters were forcibly evicted from Rangoon and relocated into satellite towns in the 1950s. Only since the introduction of the Guiding Principles has…
Over the past decade the 47-member Council of Europe[1] has put a considerable amount of effort into promoting the Guiding Principles. Eleven of the 47 Council of Europe member states have a combined population of approximately 2.5 million IDPs. Alarmingly, only…
In August 2008 the Russian-Georgian war made headlines but less attention is paid to the protracted displacement crisis triggered by earlier conflicts in 1991-1993 which caused most ethnic Georgians to leave the secessionist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Prior…
In recent years, there has been growing evidence of the effectiveness of locally led protection strategies and actions… A local women’s association in Sudan advises communities on how to seek protection in foxholes or mountain caves to escape aerial bombardments.…
In 1977 Pierre Bourdieu wrote that “every established order tends to make its own entirely arbitrary system seem entirely natural”.[1] In the case of humanitarian protection, that established order has been made up since 2005 of the cluster approach, with…
One of the main obstacles to communities organising to protect themselves is a lack of funding. Often they have a better understanding than outsiders of what the challenges may be, and have innovative ideas for overcoming them, but they lack…