From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

lead state agency may turn to other state-level ministries
present in the field. For instance, in Kenya, until
the ministry in charge of IDPs, the Ministry of State for
Special Programs, established a number of regional offices,
it was dependent on the Ministry for Provincial
Administration to carry out resettlement program activities
at the local level. Or the state-level institution
may rely heavily on the provincial/regional administrations
for implementation of its mandate at the local level
(as in Pakistan and Yemen).
When regional or district offices of the state-level institution
exist, they tend to suffer from significant gaps in
capacity, both human and financial, to carry out their
operational responsibilities. A common gap observed in
many of the case study countries (for example, Georgia,
Nepal and Uganda) was lack of adequate financial support
from the central government to help local authorities
discharge their responsibilities towards IDPs. There
also exist significant knowledge gaps; for example, often
local offices are not adequately informed or even aware
of national laws, policies and programs for IDPs. In a
number of cases, regional and district administrative
authorities, rather than central government institutions,
are the key actors in efforts to address internal displacement
(as in Afghanistan, Central African Republic,
Kenya and Yemen).
Indeed, a common observation across the case studies
is that the institutional focal point suffers from lack of
sufficient capacity to address the challenge of internal
displacement in the country. Specific capacity gaps
identified include insufficient staff; inadequate resources;
knowledge, skills and attitudes gaps; and general
institutional development issues that compromise the
efficiency of the institution’s work. For example, assessments
of the Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation
Commission are that it “is extremely weak, has failed to
develop key policies and lacks resources to implement
projects.” 13 In Georgia, following the new displacement
13 Refugees International, South Sudan: Urgent Action
Needed to Avert Collapse, Field Report, 26 March 2009, p.
2, (www.refintl.org).
Benchmark 7 Designate an Institutional Focal Point on IDPs
95
crisis of August 2008, long-standing criticisms of the
state ministry responsible for IDPs as weak and ineffective
were so sharp and widely held as to lead the
government and many in the international humanitarian
community to seriously consider reassigning this
responsibility to other state organs (see the Georgia case
study in chapter 2).
In addition to training activities (see Benchmark 4), in a
number of cases (for example, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq
and Turkey), UNHCR and other international actors, including
the UN Development Programme, International
Organization for Migration, Norwegian Refugee Council,
Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation, and U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), have
supported capacity-strengthening programs specifically
designed to address these gaps.
Communication with IDPs and Other
Stakeholders
IDPs should be able to petition the focal point ministry
either directly or through human rights NGOs. That
is in keeping with standard governance practices and,
more specifically, with Guiding Principle 3, which affirms
that IDPs have the right to request and to receive
protection and assistance from the authorities and
shall not be persecuted or punished for making such a
request.
Additional, more deliberate, channels for communication
and dialogue with IDPs about their views and
concerns have been established by the focal point institution
in some cases (see also Benchmark 9a). Georgia
presents an especially interesting case. Several different
channels of communication by IDPs to the ministry
have been established—for instance, through the creation
of an IDP telephone hotline to the ministry and
the liberal dissemination by ministry staff, including the
minister, deputy minister and chief of staff, of their cell
phone numbers so that IDPs can bypass the hotline and
reach them directly. As of mid-2009, following a recommendation
by USAID for the ministry to develop a