From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Benchmark 2 Raise National Awareness of the Problem of Displacement
report notes, 9 internal displacement due to conflict is a
highly politicized issue in Georgia, taken up particularly
in the run-up to elections, with promises made, including
by the president, to restore the territorial integrity
of Georgia and thereby enable IDPs to exercise their
right to return. 10 Indeed, until very recently, the government’s
advocacy and efforts on the part of IDPs were
single-minded, focused only on the solution of return,
while impeding through national legislation and policy
IDPs’ access to their rights and alternative solutions in
the place of displacement. While the government has
focused on conflict-induced IDPs, it has also sought to
draw attention to natural disaster-induced internal displacement
in Georgia. 11
In Sri Lanka, government acknowledgment often has
been framed in terms of providing for assistance to
and return of IDPs (often called “resettlement” in the
Sri Lankan context). But since the end of the conflict
in May 2009, the government’s public acknowledgment
and response has focused on “new” IDPs, those
displaced since 2008, effectively excluding from formal
and official assistance and protection about 200,000
of the “old” cases of people internally displaced by the
conflict before 2006. In September 2009 the Sri Lankan
prime minister stated that “the Government reiterates
its firm resolve to resettle the IDPs expeditiously.” In
September 2009, at the Sixty-Fourth Session of the UN
General Assembly, the prime minister stated, “One of
our highest priorities thereafter [after the defeat of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in May 2009] has been
to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of these
displaced civilians, and to ensure their long-term safe,
voluntary and dignified return to their homes.” 12
9 See Georgia case study, Ch. 3.
10 See, for example, “Georgia: Saakashvili Vows to Secure
IDPs’ Return to Abkhazia in Months,” 28 November 2007
(http://reliefweb.int/node/250451).
11 Erin Mooney, “Georgia: Case Study of National
Responsibility in Addressing Internal Displacement.”
12 Address by Honourable Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka, Prime
Minister and the Head of Delegation of the Democratic
Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka at the Sixty-Fourth Session
of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, 26
35
The Central African Republic, Democratic Republic
of the Congo, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda—all of which
are signatories to the legally binding International
Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR)
Regional Pact on Security, Stability and Development
(2006) and its ten protocols, two of which deal with
IDPs—recognize the existence of internal displacement
and their responsibility to address it in national IDP
policies. 13
The government of Sudan has acknowledged its responsibility
to address internal displacement, including
within the language of its policies pertaining to internal
displacement. Both the National Policy on Internally
Displaced Persons (2009) and the Policy Framework
for the Return of Displaced Persons in a Post-Conflict
Sudan (2004) acknowledge that primary responsibility
for the protection of internally displaced persons rests
with the state of Sudan. The National Policy also lists
“raising public awareness on the policy, vulnerabilities
and the problems that might result [in] displacement”
as one of the state’s obligations to IDPs. However, the
National Policy has, generally speaking, yet to be
implemented.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo the government
has acknowledged the existence of IDPs in its
meetings with international actors; it also is a signatory
to the ICGLR Regional Pact on Security, Stability
and Development and its ten protocols, including the
Protocol on the Protection and Assistance to Internally
Displaced Persons. The Model Legislation on the
Implementation of the Protocol on Protection and
Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons annexed
to the Protocol envisages awareness-raising efforts
conducted by member states. However, there is no
direct evidence of awareness-raising by the government
at the highest levels on IDP issues. At a regional
September 2009 (www.un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/pdf/
LK_en.pdf).
13 The two protocols on IDPs are the Protocol on the
Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons
and the Protocol on the Property Rights of Returning
Populations.