From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Conclusion
Benchmark 5 Ensure a Legal Framework for Upholding IDPs’ Rights
One of the most encouraging signs of governments
taking seriously their responsibility to address internal
displacement has been the development, adoption and
implementation in all regions of the world of numerous
IDP-specific laws and decrees that respect the rights of
IDPs. These developments reflect a growing realization
that internal displacement must be addressed at the national
level, both as a matter of legal obligation and national
interest. Further, as RSG Walter Kälin remarked,
“With the adoption of the African Union Convention
for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced
Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention), the demand
for the elaboration of national policies and legislation relating
to internal displacement is expected to increase.” 49
While this development would be commendable, as
witnessed elsewhere in Africa and throughout the world
it is important that legislation be translated into tangible
action that respects the basic human rights of IDPs.
49 UN General Assembly, Report of the Representative of
the Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally
Displaced Persons, A/65/282, 11 August 2010, para. 24
(www.brookings.edu/projects/idp/rsg_info.aspx).
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The legislation of the countries surveyed for this study
tends to protect a specific right of the internally displaced
(as in Georgia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq);
in others, legislation seeks to comprehensively address
all causes and stages of displacement (laws in Georgia
and Colombia, both of which passed some of the earliest
legislation on IDPs, most closely approximate this).
In all of the countries there are notable limitations to
the scope of the laws and gaps in implementing them,
but nonetheless it is important that states have taken
legal measures to recognize internal displacement and
their responsibilities to protect and assist internally displaced
persons. However, laws on internal displacement
must also be viewed in the context of other (non-IDP
specific) national laws applicable to their populations,
including IDPs, which this study, including the four expanded
case studies, has sought to examine to the extent
possible.