Internal Displacement and the Law

Abstract

Abstract This book examines the relevance of international human rights and humanitarian law, which underpins the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the Kampala Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, for preventing displacement, protecting and assisting internally displaced persons (IDPs) during displacement, and finding durable solutions for them. These are highly relevant issues at a time when the world faces more than 60 million people displaced by armed conflict and disasters, and when climate change will trigger large-scale displacement in the future. The book’s analysis is embedded in and reflects the realities of internal displacement and the challenges faced by displaced individuals and communities, their hosts, governments, and international actors. In line with its human rights approach, the book promotes a narrative that, based on the concept of sovereignty as responsibility, emphasizes the primary responsibility of states to address the needs of IDPs and views them as citizens with rights and agency rather than as vulnerable beneficiaries of humanitarian action. The book concludes that the body of relevant law amounts to an emerging legal regime on internal displacement whose substantive norms are largely adequate, but which faces specific institutional challenges at domestic and international levels that weaken efforts to address the plight of IDPs.