From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Benchmark 2 Raise National Awareness of the Problem of Displacement
ernment office charged with coordinating assistance to
IDPs, the Ministry of Social Affairs, lacked visibility as
well as the funds and capacity to respond to the needs
of IDPs. Financial and institutional capacity remains a
constraint for the committee.
National authorities in Myanmar do not recognize the
existence of conflict-induced internal displacement and
hence do not acknowledge their responsibility to address
it. However, displacement due to natural disasters,
while initially ignored by the government after devastating
Cyclone Nargis in 2008, has been acknowledged as
an issue in a government plan developed with regional
and international partners, the Post-Nargis Recovery
and Preparedness Plan.
The vice president of the government of Southern Sudan
(GoSS) admitted during the visit of the Representative
of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced
Persons (RSG) in 2005 that there was a lack of sensitivity
to IDPs’ rights among military, police, and administrative
structures within the GoSS. He acknowledged
that more advocacy was needed on behalf of the human
rights of IDPs. 20 Information about any subsequent government
efforts to rectify these issues was not available,
but the government’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs
and Disaster Management implemented an “emergency
repatriation” program with the slogan “Come Home to
Choose” to assist 1.5 million Southern Sudanese returning
from the North and Egypt in time for the January
2011 referendum on secession from the North. 21 Given
20 UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the
Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human
Rights of Internally displaced Persons, Walter Kälin:
Addendum: Mission to the Sudan, E/CN.4/2006/71/Add.6,
13 February 2006, para. 57 (www2.ohchr.org/english/
issues/idp/visits.htm).
21 Refugees International, “Statement by Refugees
International on the Government of Southern Sudan’s
Mass Repatriation Plans,” 27 August 2010 (www.refugeesinternational.org/press-room/press-release/governmentsouthern-sudan%E2%80%99s-mass-repatriation);
BBC,
“South Sudan Plans Mass Return ahead of Referendum,”
24 August 2010 (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11073919);
Hannah Entwisle, The End of the Road? A
37
reservations expressed by international actors and lack
of funding, the GoSS revised the program, launching its
Accelerated Returns and Reintegration Initiative in late
October 2010. The revised program foresaw a longer
period for return and a total of about half a million returnees
before the January 2011 referendum. 22 Returns
were fewer in number than the government had anticipated,
however, and there was evidence that a lack of information
has hindered IDPs’ return and reintegration
in the South. For example, as the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre (IDMC) reported in May 2011:
“Neither the GoSS nor state governments have formulated
or publicised a clear policy on who is entitled to
land where, forcing people to try to keep their options
open.” IDMC explains further:
The GoSS has provided little or no information
to IDPs on what they can expect upon
returning. Several returnees told IDMC that no
information was made available to them before
they decided to return to their homes in the
south. They emphasised that they were invited
to return by their governments and so expected
to be either able to return to their land or given
alternative land on which to settle. 23
The results of the lack of policy and communication
have been seen on the ground. According to some humanitarian
agencies, adequate information was “not
systematically made available to IDPs [in Khartoum]
about organised or spontaneous returns.” In November
and December 2010, only 120,000 Southern Sudanese
returned from Khartoum to the South. Many IDPs on
the move from Khartoum have not yet made it to their
villages; they are instead displaced in areas around their
villages. Some returnees, such as the 16,000 displaced in
Review of UNHCR’s Role in the Return and Reintegration
of Internally Displaced Populations, UNHCR, Evaluation
Reports, 1 July 2010 (www.unhcr.org/4c4989e89.html).
22 IDMC, NRC, “Briefing paper on Southern Sudan: IDPs
return to face slow land allocation, and no shelter, basic
services or livelihoods,” 30 May 2011, p. 1 (www.internaldisplacement.org/briefing/south-sudan)
23 Ibid., p. 2.