From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

CHAPTER 1 Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement: Findings from 15 Countries
This provision acknowledges that resources are limited,
while also making clear that a lack of adequate resources
is not a justification for inaction. Available resources
need to be used effectively and fully with the aim of
achieving, over time, progress and results in terms of
access to rights. 1
Detailed budget analysis therefore is required. While it
has unfortunately proven to be impossible (within the
constraints of the resources for this study) to collect
comprehensive data on the allocation and disbursement
of resources to address internal displacement, the following
overview provides some observations on government
policies on resource allocation for IDPs.
Overview of research findings
Colombia illustrates both the importance and limitations
of putting in place a legal framework for IDP protection
and assistance and mechanisms for monitoring
and analysis of policy implementation. On one hand,
the attention that protection of IDP rights has garnered
in Colombia from the Constitutional Court has led the
government to increase its budget allocations for IDP
assistance in accordance with its legal obligations under
the 1991 Constitution and Law 387 of 1994 and developed
through regulations and documents adopted by
the National Council on Economic and Social Policy
(CONPES) that contain the council’s guidelines on
specific aspects of the National Plan for Comprehensive
Assistance to Populations Displaced by Violence, formulated
as called for in Law 387. While implementation
of Law 387 remains problematic, it must be said that
the adoption of the law itself (see further, Benchmarks
5 and 6) marked a watershed for consideration of the
IDP issue in Colombia, as Constitutional Court Justice
1 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, Article 2(1). See also, for example, Committee on
Social and Economic Rights, General Comment No. 12
on the Right to Adequate Food (UN doc. E/C.12/1999/5
of 1999) and General Comment 14 on the Right to
the Highest Attainable Standard of Health (UN doc.
E/C.12/2000/4 of 2000).
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Manuel Cepeda Espinosa has observed. 2
Yet financial shortfalls and other related obstacles
persist, precluding realization of full respect for the
rights of internally displaced Colombians. In 2004,
the Constitutional Court issued its landmark Decision
T-025, declaring that an “unconstitutional state of affairs”
existed as a result of the gap between the rights
guaranteed to IDPs by domestic law and the insufficient
resources and institutional capacity of the government
to protect those rights. In that decision, the court examined
budgetary allocations for IDPs between 1999
and 2003 and found that while there was a significant
increase in resources for IDPs between 1999 and 2002,
there was a 32 percent decrease in 2003. The court held
that while the decrease represented fiscal reality in
Colombia, the state was nonetheless not excused from
its legal obligations to provide timely and adequate assistance
to IDPs under Law 387. 3 Among other remedial
measures, the court addressed the budgetary shortfall
for IDP issues 4 by ordering the national and territorial
entities responding to internal displacement “to fully
comply with their constitutional and legal duties, and
to adopt, in a reasonable term and within their spheres
of jurisdiction, the necessary corrective measures to
secure sufficient budgetary appropriations.” 5 The court
2 Justice Manuel Cepeda Espinosa, “The Constitutional
Protection of IDPs in Colombia,” pp. 6–7, in Rodolfo
Arango Rivadeneira, ed., Judicial Protection of
Internally Displaced Persons: The Colombian Experience
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings-Bern Project on Internal
Displacement, November 2009) (www.brookings.edu/
papers/2009/11_judicial_protection_arango.aspx).
3 Colombian Constitutional Court, Decision T-025 of 2004,
adopted by the third chamber of the court, composed of
Manuel José Cepeda Espinosa, Jaime Córdoba Triviño
and Rodrigo Escobar Gil. See section 1.1 of Annex 4
and Section 6.3.2, available at Brookings-LSE Project on
Internal Displacement, “National and Regional Policies on
Internal Displacement: Colombia” ( www.brookings.edu/
projects/idp/Laws-and-Policies/colombia.aspx).
4 Ibid.
5 Section 6.3.2, cited in Justice Manuel Cepeda Espinosa,
“The Constitutional Protection of IDPs in Colombia,”
pp. 16–17, in Judicial Protection of Internally Displaced
Persons: The Colombian Experience.