From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Benchmark 6 Develop a National Policy on Internal Displacement
not specified. 29 To date, the policy’s implementation has
been largely inadequate. A detailed national action plan
to facilitate the plan’s implementation was to be developed
after its adoption; however, as of July 2011 no such
plan had been completed. 30
The government has also sought to resolve internal displacement,
either directly or indirectly, through other
national strategies. At the time of writing, the Ministry
of Displacement and Migration was in the process of
developing a national shelter strategy, focusing on IDPs
and returnees. Also of relevance to resolving internal
displacement is the Iraq National Development Plan
(2010–2014) which recognizes “displaced families” as
among the vulnerable as well as, more specifically, the
effect displacement and migration have had on women
and youth, and sets forth some broad measures to improve
their socioeconomic standing. 31
The government of Turkey has not developed a comprehensive
national policy, but it has developed a series
of policies on IDPs since the 1990s. The government
launched the Return to Village and Rehabilitation
Project (RVRP) in 1994 (although implementation
did not really commence until 1999) to provide social
and economic infrastructure and income assistance for
returnees. However, the RVRP falls short of being in
line with the Guiding Principles. The project has been
criticized on many grounds, including for lack of transparency,
reflected in the dearth of any official written
29 Government of Iraq, Ministry of Displacement and
Migration, National Policy on Displacement, July 2008.
30 See further: Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement,
Resolving Iraqi Displacement: Humanitarian and
Development Perspectives, February 2010, (www.brookings.
edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2010/0216_iraqi_displacement/0216_iraqi_displacement.pdf);
IDMC, Iraq: Little
New Displacement but around 2.8 Million Iraqis Remain
Internally Displaced, March 2010 (www.internal-displacement.org/);
Refugees International, Field Report:
Humanitarian Needs Persist, March 2010 (www.refintl.
org).
31 Government of Iraq, Ministry of Planning, Iraq National
Development Plan 2010–2014 (http://iq.one.un.org/
documents/83/NDP%20English.pdf).
81
material explaining it, and for not truly envisioning
“return” but rather the resettlement of former village
guards to “central villages” to control the Kurdish population.
In addition, Human Rights Watch has criticized
the RVRP’s “arbitrary” and “inconsistent” assistance,
which, when provided, has been inadequate. 32
Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally
Displaced Persons Francis Deng recommended following
his 2002 mission to Turkey the “clarification and dissemination
of government policy on internal displacement.” In
December 2004, the government established a commission
to develop a framework document on internal displacement.
The commission was composed of representatives
from the Interior Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the
State Planning Organization, the South-Eastern Anatolia
Project and the State Institute of Statistics. The commission
consulted with the provincial governors of Eastern
and South-Eastern Anatolia, the United Nations and the
European Commission’s delegation to Turkey. The government
first publicly indicated its intent to put forth a
national strategy on internal displacement during RSG
Walter Kälin’s working visit to Turkey in May 2005. In
August 2005, the Council of Ministers adopted a framework
document on IDPs entitled “Measures on the Issue of
IDPs and the Return to Village and Rehabilitation Project
in Turkey” (or the Integrated Strategy Document), which
32 Human Rights Watch (HRW) has long monitored IDP
issues in Turkey and has long criticized the RVRP. For
a survey of government return initiatives prior to 1996,
see HRW/Helsinki, “Turkey’s Failed Policy to Aid the
Forcibly Displaced in the Southeast,” A Human Rights
Watch report, vol. 8, no. 9, June 1996. For an evaluation
of the 1999 Return to Village and Rehabilitation Project,
see HRW, “Displaced and Disregarded: Turkey’s Failing
Village Return Program,” A Human Rights Watch Report,
vol. 14, no. 7, October 2002. Citation from HRW, Still
Critical: Prospects in 2005 for Internally Displaced Kurds
in Turkey, 6 March 2005, p. 24 (www.hrw.org). On the
central villages issue specifically, see the above-cited HRW
October 2002 report as well as International Federation
of Human Rights Leagues, Human Rights in the Kurdish
Southeast: Alarming Situation Despite Extensive Legal
Reforms: Release of an International Investigative Mission
Report, July 2003 (www.fidh.org).