From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement
cies and NGOs. 43 The UN Special Representative of the
Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict has
also drawn on the Framework in setting out the expectations
of government and nonstate actors in meeting
their responsibilities toward internally displaced children
in situations of armed conflict. 44
Box 2. IDP situations in which
the Framework has been used
Afghanistan Mexico
Central African Republic The Philippines
Ethiopia Russian Federation
Georgia Sierra Leone
Iraq Sri Lanka
Kenya Uganda
Nepal United States of America
In addition, regional organizations and forums have
discussed and disseminated the Framework at various
levels, perhaps most important, the country level.
Regional Initiatives
In the Americas, a regional conference on internal displacement
attended by governments, local NGOs and
researchers, and international agencies and NGOs, endorsed
the Framework and elaborated upon the twelve
benchmarks to specify a total of sixteen key elements in
all. 45 The Framework also has been formally presented
43 IASC, Handbook for the Protection of Internally Displaced
Persons, 2010 (www.unhcr.org/4c2355229.html).
44 UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-
General for Children and Armed Conflict, “The Rights
and Guarantees of Internally Displaced Children in
Armed Conflict,” Working Paper No. 2, September 2010
(www.un.org/children/conflict/english/index.html).
45 Regional Seminar on Internal Displacement in the
Americas, Mexico City, Mexico, February 18-20, 2004,
Brookings-SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, 2004
(www.brookings.edu/idp). For a summary of the how the
National Responsibility Framework was used as the basis
for the Regional Framework for Action adopted, see Erin
Mooney, “Promoting national responsibility for internal
10
to and discussed by member states of the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe and, in Africa,
to member states of the Southern African Development
Community and of the Economic Community of West
African States. 46 Also in Africa, the Framework was presented
and discussed at the pre-summit to the African
Union (AU)’s first ever summit on forced displacement;
the Summit which followed adopted the AU Convention
for the Protection of Internally Displacement (Kampala
Convention), in which national responsibility is a central
theme. Local NGOs have promoted the Framework to
focus attention and advocacy efforts on national responsibility
for addressing internal displacement in Africa. 47
In the Asia-Pacific region, the Framework has been used
in regional training forums for national human rights
institutions on issues of internal displacement. 48 The
Commonwealth, a cross-regional inter-governmental
organization, including several countries with internal
displacement (e.g. Bangladesh, Cyprus, India, Kenya,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Zimbabwe),
promotes the benchmarks contained in the Framework
as ‘best practices’ for its member states. 49
displacement in the Americas,” Forced Migration Review,
Issue 20 (2004), p. 49.
46 See further: Brookings-Bern Project on Internal
Displacement, Regional Seminar on Internal Displacement
in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
Region, 24-26 August 2005, Gaborone, Botswana, February
2006; Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement,
Regional Conference on Internal Displacement in West
Africa, 26-28 April 2006, Abuja, Nigeria; Brookings Project
on Internal Displacement, Regional Workshop on Internal
Displacement in the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia), 10-12 May 2000, Tbilisi, Georgia—Summary
Report. For reports and related conference materials, see:
www.brookings.edu/projects/idp/contents.aspx
47 Joseph Chilengi, “Appeal for IDPs,” Pambazuka News,
(www.pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/30019/print).
48 See, for example, Roberta Cohen, “National Policy and
Legal Development,” (www.asiapacificforum.net/services/
training/regional-workshops/idp/downloads/session-2/
cohen2.pdf)
49 Commonwealth Secretariat, Human Rights Unit, Report
of the Expert Group Meeting on Internal Displacement in
the Commonwealth: Common Themes and Best Practice
Guidelines, 19-21 May 2003 (June 2004).