From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

CHAPTER 1 Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement: Findings from 15 Countries
—Ensure the right of those affected to an effective
remedy. 6
When conflicts or natural disasters occur, people feel
compelled to escape dangerous situations and to protect
themselves by leaving their homes and communities.
This is a natural (and often effective) strategy. Even
so, displacement usually has devastating consequences
for the individuals displaced. Their displacement also
has impacts on the communities that they leave behind
as well as the communities within which they live as
IDPs, and it has important implications for the work of
municipal and national governments, for civil society
organizations, and for international humanitarian and
development agencies. Many people flee a conflict or
a disaster under the assumption that leaving is a temporary
measure and that they will soon return to their
homes once the fighting has shifted elsewhere or the
immediate destructive effects of a disaster are over. But
experience has shown that displacement has a tendency
to become protracted, particularly in the case of conflict.
About two-thirds of the world’s conflict-induced
IDPs (and a similar percentage of refugees) are now
considered to be living in situations of protracted displacement.
7 In the case of disasters, it tends to be assumed
that displacement will be short-lived, but that is
not necessarily true. In some cases the resulting devastation
is so extensive that people simply cannot return
6 See also Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement,
Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for
National Responsibility, 2005, pp. 12–13.
7 Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Expert
Seminar on Protracted IDP Situations, Hosted by UNHCR
and the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement,
21–22 June 2007, Geneva, (www.brookings.edu/
events/2007/0621_displacement.aspx); Forced Migration
Review, Feature Issue: Protracted Displacement, no. 33
(2009) (www.fmreview.org); Elizabeth Ferris, ed., Resolving
Internal Displacement: Prospects for Local Integration,
Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, May
2011(www.brookings.edu/idp); Brookings-LSE Project on
Internal Displacement, Internal Displacement Monitoring
Centre (IDMC), and Norwegian Refugee Council, IDPs in
Protracted Displacement: Is Local Integration a Solution?
Report from the Second Expert Seminar on Protracted
Internal Displacement, 19–20 January 2011, Geneva (www.
internal-displacement.org ).
22
safely and alternative solutions can take time to find;
this is a particular challenge for persons displaced due
to climate change.
Therefore, measures to prevent displacement in the first
place are extraordinarily important, and they require
the involvement of a range of government authorities.
In trying to prevent displacement in cases of conflict,
governments must ensure the security of people in
conflict. They must also ensure that people have access
to basic services and to livelihoods so that they are not
forced to leave their communities in order to survive.
In the midst of armed conflict, governments are usually
focused largely on military objectives. Preventing
displacement in this context requires a government to
make the protection of civilians a primary component
of its policy and practice. At a minimum, it requires a
government to hold its own military forces responsible
for their obligation under international humanitarian
law to protect civilians. However, displacement is often
caused by non-state actors over whom the national authorities
have little or no control. 8
Perhaps more than any other benchmark, preventing
displacement during conflict requires a high-level commitment
by national authorities and the engagement of
security forces. This is not a task that can be handed
over to international humanitarian agencies or to domestic
social service providers. Although other actors
can raise awareness of mounting tensions and sound the
alarm when conflict is imminent, they are rarely able to
prevent displacement. That is a government responsibility.
The role of other actors is to encourage and support
the government in meeting its responsibility—and
to call attention to situations in which displacement has
not been prevented. At the same time, it is essential to
8 See, for example, Geneva Call and IDMC, Armed Non-
State Actors and the Protection of Internally Displaced
People, conference organized by Geneva Call and IDMC,
23–24 March 2011, Geneva, June 2011(www.internaldisplacement.org);
Forced Migration Review, Feature Issue:
Armed Non-State Actors and Displacement, no. 37 (March
2011) (www.fmreview.org); Geneva and Greta Zeender,
“Getting Non-State Actors to Protect IDPs,” Forced
Migration Review, Supplement: Protection and Assisting
the Internally Displaced: The Way Forward (October
2005), pp. 22–23 (www.fmreview.org).