From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

CHAPTER 1 Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement: Findings from 15 Countries
management body, to name a few—the institutional
focal point has an important role to play in coordinating
the government response. Its role must not be limited to
state-level institutions but should extend to all relevant
levels of government authority, including regional or
provincial and, especially, municipal authorities, which
often are the first and main point of contact between
IDPs and government. Intragovernment coordination is
not always easy; municipal authorities often complain
that bureaucrats in national capitals are removed from
the day-to-day realities facing local governments and
that financial support for action at the local level is inadequate.
2 If the institutional focal point is to be truly
national, it is important that its relationship with all
relevant government actors at all levels of government
be strong, supportive and collaborative.
Less clear has been whether it is common, useful, or
even essential for there to be a single national institutional
focal point dealing with all forms of internal
displacement in a country irrespective of the cause of
displacement—conflict or other violence, natural disasters
or—though this was not considered in this study—
development-induced displacement.
Overview of research findings
The case studies suggest that action in line with this
benchmark is a concrete step that many governments are
in fact ready to take. Of the fifteen countries reviewed
for this study, all but two (Myanmar and Sri Lanka)
2 See, for example, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal
Displacement, Protecting the Displaced in Colombia: The
Role of Municipal Authorities: A Summary Report (July
2009) (www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/07_colombia.
aspx); Workshop on the Implementation of Uganda’s
National Policy for Internally Displaced Persons, Kampala,
Uganda, 3–4 July 2006, hosted by the Government of
Uganda and convened by the Representative of the
Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally
Displaced Persons, and the Brookings-Bern Project on
Internal Displacement, in consultation with the IASC
Country Team (http://www.brookings.edu/fp/projects/
idp/conferences/Uganda_Workshop2006_rpt.pdf)
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have designated a national institutional focal point for
addressing internal displacement (see Figure 1-1). As to
the implications of the lack of a government focal point,
it is important to note that whereas in Myanmar there
appears to be no institution with assigned responsibility
for IDP issues and essentially no government engagement
with respect to conflict-induced IDPs, in Sri Lanka
a variety of ministries have been involved in addressing
internal displacement for many years, but there is no
single government institution with lead responsibility. 3
The lack of an institutional focal point does not necessarily
connote the absence of government engagement
with the IDP issue.
In any case, designating a focal point is just the first
step; the institution also should meet the various criteria
mentioned above. The discussion below compares
the ways in which governments have established and
supported these institutions in terms of timing of the
designation; modalities of the decision; profile of the institution;
responsibilities; coordination issues; capacity;
and communication with IDPs.
Timing of designation of the focal point
institution
While a national institutional focal point on IDP issues
exists in almost all of the case study countries, the case
studies also show that the decision to establish the institution
tends to be rather late in coming. In the vast
majority of cases, the institution was named only several
years after internal displacement first occurred
(for example, in Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Nepal, Sri
Lanka, Sudan, Turkey and Yemen). It also is important
to note that the designated institutional focal point
may change over time. Sri Lanka, for instance, has undergone
numerous changes of focal point institution.
However, this is not necessarily the case. In other cases
of protracted displacement—namely in Georgia, Iraq,
Sudan and Uganda—the duration of displacement does
3 See further the Sri Lanka case study in chapter 2 of this
volume.