International Refugee Rights Intiative (IRRI)

Thirteen years after the appointment of the first Representative of the Secretary General for Internally Displaced Persons marked one of the first attempts to address institutionally the plight of the internally-displaced, there is significant interest in examining how the international community can more effectively respond.

Intervening on behalf of the internally displaced has been an endeavor fraught with peril. International action in this area has been hampered by the fact that there is no single agency assigned the primary responsibility for protecting IDPs. Unlike refugees, who are given special protection under international law by the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, IDP rights are not enshrined in a single treaty. There is no parallel body to the UNHCR empowered to intervene on their behalf. Efforts to create such a regime run up against the fear on the part of states that granting such authority would erode their sovereignty.

Evaluating international efforts on IDPs

As a result, the response to IDP crises has often been characterized by a lack of attention to the rights of IDPs and a lack of co-operation across UN institutions and NGO actors in the field. Two recently published studies explore different aspects of these problems. In March 2005, the UNHCR published a review of its own internal decision making in relation to IDPs. In April, a coalition of seven donors published a comprehensive review of international aid to IDPs. This study brought together the Danish and Dutch Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Development Cooperation Ireland (DCI), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNHCR and the World Food Programme (WFP) in a loose coalition designed to facilitate the exchange of lessons learned. The result was a synthesis of 17 evaluation reports covering ten countries, six of these were African states, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Angola, Somalia and Eritrea.

Addressing the rights of IDPs

The study concluded that the rights of the internally displaced were inadequately protected, noting that in most countries the protections recognized in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement had not been incorporated into national law. Even in those cases where the Principles had been incorporated, the rights of the displaced were often not respected. For example, it noted that while the passage of national legislation on IDPs incorporating the Principles had been a major success for advocates, at least 30% of returning IDPs were doing so in conditions not meeting the minimum standards laid down in the legislation.

While the report notes that domestic legislation is an important additional tool in calling governments to account, it calls on donors to do more. The report recommends that donors support efforts to see the Principles incorporated into domestic legislation and to monitor the rights of the displaced on an ongoing basis. It explores the possibility of how the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights might assist in this regard. Interestingly, however, it specifically recommends that national civil society organizations should be supported to raise awareness about the rights of the internally displaced and to hold governments to account. The report further urges donors to support this local advocacy with advocacy of their own, and to ensure that protection activities are not forsaken in the rush to meet the material needs of the displaced. For example, an evaluation of USAID funding in the Democratic Republic of Congo concluded that despite a policy commitment to protection, the agency had focused primarily on food aid.

The challenge of coordination

The donor’s report also identified the lack of coordination between UN agencies in regard to IDP operations. It identified OCHA and UNHCR as potential lead agencies, but noted that although UNHCR was often well positioned to take on this role, the overall effectiveness of operations was at times hampered by a lack of clarity about the role that UNHCR would take in a particular crisis. The UNHCR’s own evaluation of its internal decision making acknowledged this as a concern. The UNHCR evaluation concludes that:

UNHCR’s use of existing policy criteria in operational decision-making is uncertain, inconsistent and unpredictable. The existing criteria are not systematically used as a reference point or as the crucial tool around which the decision is centred.

This is not only a source of confusion in the particular context where the decision is made: it also creates tension between the UNHCR and other agencies which impedes collaboration. As the report notes, “[s]harp reversals of UNHCR’s commitment to IDPs, even after a significant change in political circumstances, and a perception that decisions were made without a comprehensive analysis of the situation, have eroded UNHCR’s credibility, especially externally.”

The reports were not able to evaluate the effects of one important recent move to improve coordination between agencies. In July 2004, OCHA’s Internal Displacement Unit was upgraded to the Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division. The new Division is headed by Dennis McNamara, a senior UN official who has worked for many years with UNHCR. As head of the Division, McNamara reports directly to the Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs. The Division’s creation is a signal that more high level attention is being paid to crises of displacement and the challenges of coordination, but the jury is still out on its effectiveness.

When to end assistance?

When to end support to displaced populations was also identified as an area of concern in both reports. The donor’s report noted that assistance was often halted when IDPs returned, despite the fact that “not only to they need maintenance support, but they also need assistance to re-establish their livelihoods and assets” and that in agricultural settings it often took two years for returnees to become fully productive. The UNHCR evaluation similarly noted that confusion about when the assistance might end was at times an obstacle to UNHCR’s involvement in IDP situations at all.

Implications for NGOs

NGOs engaged or contemplating engagement with the internally displaced should consider how to encourage positive engagement by donors. For example, NGOs clearly have a role to play in monitoring and advocating for the rights of the displaced. The fact that donors have now themselves have identified the need to support protection activities, and particularly that they have singled out national organizations as having a particular role to play may represent an important opportunity for NGOs to press for additional support to undertake or expand their activities on behalf of the displaced. The donor’s report calls for a deliberate testing of the principles in two contexts in Africa, northern Uganda and Darfur. African advocates should consider whether this presents an opportunity for them to explore new modes of engaging in IDP protection.

The full version of the UNHCR paper, “Consistent and Predictable Responses to IDPs: A review of UNHCR’s decision-making processes,” is available online.

The full version of the donor agencies, “Support to Internally Displaced Persons: Learning from evaluations,” is also available online.