From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Benchmark 10 Establish the Conditions and Provide the Means for IDPs to Secure Durable Solutions
The village guard system has been widely condemned,
both nationally and internationally, but Turkey has yet
to abolish it, despite promises to do so to the RSG on
IDPs and to the European Union. 134 In June 2007, an
amendment to the Village Law went into effect, permitting
the recruitment of up to 60,000 village guards. 135
Land mines and unexploded ordnance—which have
been laid by the state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK)—also hinder durable returns in Turkey. They
pose a significant threat to civilians, including returning
IDPs and even military personnel, in the east and
southeast of the country. 136
CN.4/2003/86/Add.2, 27 November 2002 (www2.ohchr.
org/english/issues/idp/visits.htm).
134 Turkish, UN and European entities have called for the
abolishment of the village guard system, including the
Turkish Grand National Assembly’s 1995 parliamentary
commission on political killings, the Grand National
Assembly’s 1997 parliamentary commission on the
Susurluk affair and the Grand National Assembly’s 1998
parliamentary commission on internal migration; the
RSG for IDPs (2002); the UN Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions (2001),
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
(2002), the Kurdish Human Rights Project and Bar
Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (2006),
Human Rights Watch (2006), Council of Europe (Thomas
Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights, October
2009).
135 Official Gazette, “Köy Kanunundave Bazı Kanunlarda
Değişiklik Yapılmasına Dair Kanun” [Law Concerning
Amendments Brought to the Law on Villages and Some
Other Laws], No. 5673, 27 May 2007. 26450, 2 June (http://
rega.basbakanlik.gov.tr/Eskiler/2007/05/20070527-2.
htm), as cited in Dilek Kurban and others, Coming
to Terms with Forced Migration: Post-Displacement
Restitution of Citizenship Rights in Turkey, TESEV, 2007,
p. 18.. According to TESEV, “The position of provisional
village guards was created on 26 March 1985 through
a clause added by Law no. 3175 to the 1924 Village Law
(Law no. 442),” in Dilek Kurban, Ayşe Betül Çelik and
DenizYükseker, Overcoming a Legacy of Mistrust, p. 20.
136 See, for example, Deniz Yükseker and Dilek Kurban,
Permanent Solution to Internal Displacement? An
Assessment of the Van Action Plan for IDPs, p. 11.
153
In Georgia, from the early days of the displacement
crisis, the government has emphasized return of IDPs
to their places of origin as the only desirable solution. 137
Indeed, the authorities created legal, administrative and
political obstacles to the full exercise by IDPs of their
rights in their place of displacement and impeded their
economic, social and political integration, even if temporary.
138 While those obstacles have now largely been
removed and the government has shown itself in recent
years to be open to improving IDPs’ living conditions in
the place of displacement, emphasis on the right of IDPs
and refugees to return remains the centerpiece of the
government’s approach to displacement.
In fact, considerable IDP return did occur, both to South
Ossetia and to Abkhazia, in particular to the Gali region,
during the periods since the mid-1990s when there was
a long break in active hostilities,. However, that return
was not sustainable in the absence of secure conditions
and a lasting solution to the conflict, as was revealed in
May 1998 when a renewed outbreak of violence in the
Gali district of Abkhazia displaced some 40,000 recent
returnees anew. In subsequent years, approximately
45,000 to 55,000 IDPs returned spontaneously to the
Gali district, although to this day, for political reasons,
their return is not officially acknowledged by the government
of Georgia. Meanwhile, the Abkhaz side has
pushed for recognition of the IDPs’ return, which would
bring political gains by suggesting that normalcy and effective
law and order have been established in the region
and that IDPs have “voted with their feet.”
137 See further the case study on Georgia in chapter 2 of this
volume.
138 See UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the
Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally
Displaced Persons, Mr. Francis Deng—Addendum:
Profiles in Displacement: Georgia, 2001, paras. 34–69;
UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the
Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human
Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Walter Kälin—
Mission to Georgia (21 to 24 December 2005), 24 March
2006 , para. 15; Erin Mooney and Balkees Jarrah, The
Voting Rights of Internally Displaced Persons: The OSCE
Region (Brookings Institution–Johns Hopkins SAIS
Project on Internal Displacement, November, 2004),