From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

also ordered the National Council for Comprehensive
Assistance to the Population Displaced by Violence to
define, within two months, the amount of resources to
be used at the national and territorial levels to overcome
the “unconstitutional state of affairs” and thereby fulfill
the state’s obligations to IDPs.
In large part because of the jurisprudence of the
Constitutional Court, the government has increased its
budget allocations to IDP issues since Decision T-025.
According to a government statement in July 2010, central
government allocations to IDPs increased tenfold
between 2002 and 2010, from 543 million Colombian
pesos (approximately $220,000 using July 2002 rates)
to 5.3 billion Colombian pesos (estimated 2.7 million
using July 2010 rates). 6 On several occasions since its
2004 decision, the court has expressed dissatisfaction
with government progress in several areas, including
in terms of ensuring sufficient budgetary allocations. 7
In its 2010 report to the court, the government stated
that it had made progress toward IDP protection and
assistance, including by earmarking funds for IDPs. But
there is an evident lack of trickle-down to local administrations
from the central government as financial allocations
to municipalities were still quite low, even for
those with large IDP populations, and all municipalities
had allocated less than 2 percent of their budgets to
their response to internal displacement. 8
6 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC),
Overview: Colombia: Government response improves
but still fails to meet needs of growing IDP population, 10
December 2010, p. 8 (www.internal-displacement.org).
7 Manuel Jose Cepeda-Espinosa, ”How Far May Colombia’s
Constitutional Court Go to Protect IDP Rights?” Forced
Migration Review, Ten Years of the Guiding Principles on
Internal Displacement (2009), pp. 21–23.
8 IDMC, Overview: Colombia: Government response improves
but still fails to meet needs of growing IDP population,
p. 8. For further analysis on municipalities’ responses
to internal displacement in Colombia, see: 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).
Benchmark 11 Allocate Adequate Resources to the Problem
161
Conversely, budgetary allocations may decrease over
time, sometimes dramatically, from one year to the
next. In Pakistan, in the 2009–10 fiscal year (FY) budget
speech, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Finance and
Economic Affairs emphasized the government’s responsibility
to “meet the maintenance and rehabilitation
costs” of IDPs displaced as a result of the insurgency. To
that end, the government allocated 50 billion Pakistani
rupees (Rs.) ($630 million) (approximately 0.3 percent
of GDP) of its total FY expenditure of Rs. 1699.19 billion
for internal displacement–related relief, rehabilitation,
reconstruction and security. 9 In contrast, the minister’s
budget speech for FY 2010–11 made no mention of displacement.
The only monetary allocation to IDPs that
could be located was a nominal amount of money (Rs.
191,783 or $2,275) allocated to “Emergency Relief and
Repatriation” within the Cabinet secretariat. 10
Of course, budgetary allocations are only the start of
the story; resources must actually be dispersed. Nepal,
for instance, does allocate funds in its national budget
for IDPs, but there is a gap between allocation and
distribution. As of January 2009, the Ministry of Peace
and Reconstruction had distributed to districts only 42
percent of the total budget allocated for the State Relief
and Assistance Package from the National Peace Trust
Fund, and insufficient funds prevented most districts
from providing adequate, if any, services for IDPs. 11
9 “Budget for the Fiscal Year 2009-10” as presented by
Minister of State for Finance and Economic Affairs,
Hina Rabbani Khar, published 14 June 2009 by the
Associated Press of Pakistan in The Nation (www.nation.
com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/
Business/14-Jun-2009/Text-of-budget-speech
10 “Revised Budget Ceilings 2010–2011,” D.O. No.F.3(1)/
MTBF/2010/, Finance Division, Government of Pakistan,
8 July 2010. The U.S. dollar calculation is based on an early
2010 exchange rate.
11 IDP Working Group, Distant from Durable Solutions:
Conflict-Induced Internal Displacement in Nepal, June 2009
(www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(ht
tpDocuments)/666B48300E469C68C12575E600347853/$
file/distant+from+durable+solutions+June+2009.pdf).