From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

CHAPTER 1 Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement: Findings from 15 Countries
better system for handling queries from IDPs, reception
centers were established that IDPs can visit in order to
obtain information and register their concerns through
a case management system. In addition, regular “townhall
meetings” of the minister with IDP communities,
visits by the minster to IDP collective centers, and regular
participation by senior ministry officials in forums
for dialogue with IDP representatives provide further
access. 14 In Afghanistan, a national IDP committee (no
longer in existence), with which ministry officials and
even the president consulted, was established by the
ministry together with UNHCR with a view to facilitating
and enhancing dialogue, consultations and joint
planning of the return process.
When a central or district coordinating committee
exists for relevant government entities and other
partners, in some cases representatives of civil society
groups are included as members of the committee (as
in the Central African Republic, Georgia, Nepal and
Uganda). However, it is important to note that in several
cases the selection of the participating civil society
representatives is to be done by the government (as in
the Central African Republic, Nepal and Uganda). For
instance, in Uganda, the District Disaster Management
Committee, which serves as “the lead agency for the
protection and assistance of internally displacement
persons” at the district level, includes two IDPS, one
woman and one man, who are resident in the camps
in the district; selection of the IDP representatives is
determined by the committee.
Conclusion
Designating an institutional focal point for IDPs should
be a relatively straightforward task for governments. It
appears that this is an easier step for a government to take
than to draft a law on displacement, devise a mechanism
for collecting data on IDPs or support durable solutions
for IDPs. Moreover, once an institutional focal point
has been named, the office can take on responsibility
14 See the Georgia case study in chapter 2 of this volume.
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for these and all other actions to protect and assist IDPs
as outlined in the benchmarks. Thus, the designation of
a national institutional focal point can be an important
propeller of progress in other areas of national responsibility
for addressing internal displacement.
The research indicates that all but two governments of
the fifteen surveyed had designated a national institutional
focal point. On one level, that suggests that this
is, indeed, among the easier steps for governments to
take (though typically, they do so only several years
into a crisis). But scratch the surface a little, and the
picture is less encouraging: these institutions tend to be
“third-tier” bodies that are under-resourced and located
within low-priority, low-prestige ministries or offices
having limited political leverage, creating problems of
leadership and coordination. Simply designating a focal
point therefore is not necessarily a clear indication of
a government’s commitment to addressing internal displacement;
a clearer, more nuanced indication would be
provided by a measure of the priority and support given
to the focal point.
While our research seems to support the value of having
a focal point at least in the initial stages of displacement,
the question arises of whether having a national IDP
focal point facilitates or frustrates efforts to integrate
IDP issues into the broader government framework.
This issue becomes more critical as displacement becomes
protracted. After a decade of displacement, for
example, it may be more important that the Ministry
of Education has incorporated measures to ensure the
access of IDP children to public schools than it is that
a focal point has been charged with interministerial
coordination.
Further, the experience in the case studies also shows
that designating an institutional focal point is just the
first step. Governments must also ensure that this body
has access to all the required support—technical, financial,
operational and political—to carry out its functions.
Moreover, it is often, though not always, the case that
separate institutional entities are given responsibility
for internal displacement due to different causes, with