Duty of the State to Protect Internally Displaced Persons in the Event of Disaster

Abstract

This chapter attempts to discern the predominant norms of the International Disaster Response Law (IDRL) that (the norms) principally deal with the State’s duty to protect the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the event of disaster and demonstrates that the newly developed IDRL has not developed any new legally binding norms or new legal bindingness in the existing norms relating to IDPs; rather, it mostly reiterates the existing corpus of norms with legal bindingness from other regimes of international law, mainly International Human Rights Law (IHRL). The discussion on IDRL in the chapter revolves around the Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disaster (Draft Articles), the major holistic international legal instrument on IDRL. In framing the norms related to protection of IDPs, the Draft Articles highly rely on the Guiding Principles for the Internally Displaced (Guiding Principles), a non-binding soft law instrument adopted by UNGA. The protection norms derive their legal bindingness directly from international human rights law (IHRL). Under the IHRL regime, the States enjoy a considerable range of leeway in derogating and restricting the rights on certain grounds which may be utilized as justification for human rights violation. The Draft Articles impose the primary duty of protection on the affected State, while assisting States have a voluntary duty to assist the affected State by the virtue of the principle of international cooperation and assistance.KeywordsInternally displaced person (IDP)International Disaster Response Law (IDRL)Disaster displacementHuman rights