A few governments have registered IDPs in a comprehensive manner, most recently the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina with support from UNHCR. In Turkey the government is expected to release the results of a comprehensive IDP survey soon. However, for…
Discrimination against minorities, religious and ethnic hatred, state repression, demands for self-determination, famines, floods and ill-conceived development projects have contributed to massive internal displacement in South Asia. For the most part victims are unable to cross borders and are forced…
Internal displacement is a major obstacle to development in Sri Lanka. At times up to two million have been displaced. The current number of IDPs – the long-term displaced and those recently displaced both by the tsunami and the resumption…
Colombia’s internal armed conflict is the longest running in Latin America, a complex conflict which has been fought primarily between left-wing guerrillas and Colombian armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries but also involving drug traffickers, landowners and other legal and illegal…
Roberta believes that the distinctions between refugees and IDPs are arbitrary and argues for parity between them. I contend there are substantial legal and material differences arising from the configuration of the international system based on states. While Roberta strongly…
Surely, internal displacement as a concept owes its ascent to the Guiding Principles. But it also gained worldwide circulation because these principles landed on policy makers’ tables accompanied by the audible thud and impressive caliber of two heavyweight volumes by…
In Refugees and Human Rights: A Research and Policy Agenda[1] Cohen set out the underlying reasons to be concerned about refugees. She observed that refugee scholars often focused on those who crossed borders because of persecution and conflict, whereas the…
In 1992 Francis Deng was asked to pursue his mandate as representative of the Secretary-General (RSG) on a part-time basis – a dubious yet common practice in the cash-starved world of human rights. Starting from scratch, and without an official…
I remember working with Roberta in the late 1980s – long before the term ‘IDP’ became commonplace in the humanitarian community. Many NGOs were concerned about the lack of protection of uprooted people who had not crossed a national border…