2004 Annual Report, NPDS Project.pdf - IDP SriLanka

4.4 PERSONAL DOCUMENTS TO INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONSEvery human being has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before thelaw20.1, Guiding Principles on Internal DisplacementTo give effect to this right for internally displaced persons, the authorities concernedshall issue to them all documents necessary for the enjoyment and exercise of theirlegal rights, such as passports, personal identification documents, birth certificates andmarriage certificates. In particular, the authorities shall facilitate the issuance of newdocuments or the replacement of documents lost in the course of displacement,without imposing unreasonable conditions, such as requiring the return to one's areaof habitual residence in order to obtain these or other required documents.Principle 20.2, Guiding Principles on Internal DisplacementIntroductionDue to the sudden displacement, many of IDPs have lost their personal documentssuch as the National Identity Cards, Birth Certificates, Death Certificates and MarriageCertificates that they did not have access to many services provided by theGovernment and which can be cited as a basic human right.The Project has received more than five thousand complaints regarding the violationsof human rights in the year 2003; out of this 40% of the complaints relating to nonavailabilityof personal documents such as Birth Certificate, Marriage Certificate,Death Certificate and National Identity Cards directly or indirectly.Personal documents can be considered as imperative documents for the people in SriLanka for their day-to-day life. The Project learnt that this non-availability ofdocuments leads to direct or indirect human rights violations and double victimization.Therefore the project made policy decision to intervene and implement a specialprogramme with the collaboration of Registrar General Department, Registration ofPersons Department and Ministry of RRR to overcome these problems. The programsdealt in with raising awareness of government officials as well as public, collectingapplications and providing those.Awareness ProgrammesIt is important to aware the respective government officials and civil societies on theissues relating to the personal documents. There are practical problems in issuing thepersonal documents to IDPs, because they do not have sufficient supportive materialsto obtain personal documents. They have lost all the documents and now live inwelfare centers. Therefore special concern should be put on and special proceduresmust to be adopted to solve these issues.To bring awareness among the government officials and other related officials inrelation to issuance of personal documents the following awareness programme wereorganized and conducted by the project in all project areas and Monaragal District inJuly and November 2004 with participation of Register General, Additional RegisterGeneral ( N & E ) , Additional Register General ( Training ) and the DeputyAnnual Report 2004National Protection and Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons ProjectHuman Rights Commission of Sri Lanka28