From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

actions of DRC authorities and nongovernment actors
in the field of IDP rights and to disseminate the Guiding
Principles. 3 The Norwegian Refugee Council’s Training
on IDP Guiding Principles, Counseling and Legal
Assistance to IDPs on Return program sought to raise
awareness among local authorities and humanitarian
actors on the protection and assistance needs of IDPs. 4
At times, IDMC training is conducted in partnership
with national human rights institutions. For example, in
2003, IDMC organized a workshop in partnership with
the Nepal Human Rights Commission to promote and
disseminate the Guiding Principles and to analyze the
country’s internal displacement situation through the
lens of the Guiding Principles. Representatives from
government ministries, the police and the army participated
in the workshop.
Often training workshops or seminars on the Guiding
Principles also are organized during or recommended as
a result of a country mission by the RSG. In May 2000,
as part of the first visit by RSG Francis Deng to Georgia,
the government hosted a regional workshop on internal
displacement to raise awareness of the Guiding Principles
among relevant government officials from Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia as well as international and local
stakeholders. Various training sessions on the Guiding
Principles followed in subsequent years in Georgia for
government officials at the central and local levels, for
national human rights institutions and for local NGOs
at workshops organized in particular by NRC/IDMC,
UNHCR, the Council of Europe and local NGOs. During
RSG Walter Kälin’s working visit to Turkey in May 2005,
IDMC and UNDP provided a training workshop on the
Guiding Principles to the subprovincial governors of the
fourteen provinces affected by internal displacement.
Cooperation between Turkish authorities and the United
Nations also has led to the training of Interior Ministry
officials on the use of the Guiding Principles. In Yemen,
where overall there is a substantial lack of capacity for
dealing with IDP issues at the central and local levels
of government, RSG Kälin, following his visit in April
2010, recommended increasing capacity-building efforts.
IDMC and UNHCR conducted training on the Guiding
Principles in April 2010, which included national
3 Ibid., p. 91.
4 Ibid., p. 93.
Benchmark 4 Training on the Rights of IDPs
55
UNHCR staff as well as government officials, particularly
from local levels. UNHCR also conducted a series of
protection workshops open to local officials, while IDMC
was planning a “train-the-trainers” workshop on IDP
protection in late 2010. In the Central African Republic,
where governmental capacity also is limited, IDMC has
facilitated a number of workshops on IDP issues for
government officials as well as NGOs, which have included
awareness-raising and training on the Guiding Principles
and on the subregional and regional standards that have
been developed based on the principles. In July 2010,
UNHCR and IDMC organized a workshop at which the
RSG participated to discuss the development of national
legislation reflecting international and regional standards
on IDPs. Moreover, in a potential good practice, in the
Central African Republic the legal mandate establishing
the national institutional focal point for addressing
internal displacement (see also Benchmark 7) specifically
gives this institution responsibility for initiating training
sessions regarding the problem of displacement, based
on human rights, international humanitarian law and the
Guiding Principles. 5
Of particular interest to this study, are a number of examples
of training provided to government authorities on
the Framework for National Responsibility itself. Indeed,
the benchmarks outlined in the Framework were first
developed as part of guidance materials on internal displacement
developed for the International Organization
for Migration’s global training and capacity-building
program on migration management for government policymakers
and practitioners as well as IOM staff. 6 IDMC
5 See Erin Mooney, Examen du cadre normative de la
République Centrafricaine relatif à la protection des
personnes déplacées à l’intérieur de leur proper pays: audit
juridique (Brookings Institution–University of Bern
Project on Internal Displacement, February 2011), pp.
20–21.
6 IOM, Essentials of Migration Management: A Guide for
Policy-Makers and Practitioners (2005), also available
in Arabic, Bosnian, Korean, Spanish and Russian. With
respect to benchmarks of national responsibility, the
IOM guidance is consistent with that provided by the
Framework. The displacement module in the IOM guide
was drafted by the researcher at the Brookings Institution’s
Project on Internal Displacement which authored the
Framework.