IISWAI

International Students with Awesome Ideas

Volume 2, Issue 5

August 2009

 

 

       INTRODUCTION

 

   Have you ever heard the word “Internally Displaced Persons?” Maybe yes, or maybe no. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) refers to people who are displaced from where they live because of conflicts, violations of human rights, natural disasters, and other causes but somehow can’t cross the border and must stay within their countries of origin. The number of the Internally Displaced Persons has reached over 25 million and 54 nations have IDPs within their territories.

 

   IDPs are exactly the same as refugees except for just one difference―they haven’t crossed the border and they still stay within the territories of their countries of origin. Refugees are people who have escaped from their countries of origin because of persecution. They are exactly the same in that they are exposed to danger and need to be rescued very quickly. Whether they have crossed the border or not is the only difference between refugees and IDPs. Although it may seem to be a small difference, it is in fact a difference which has huge influence. Just because of this small but important difference, the problem of IDPs is very difficult to solve.

 

   Why does this small difference produce such a big difference? Why is rescuing IDPs so difficult? I would like to answer these questions in this essay. I would like to add my individual opinion at the end of the essay.

 

       The Legal System and IDPs

 

   International legal systems are indispensable when we need to protect a certain group of weak people. For example, we have “Convention on the Rights of the Child” to protect children, and we have “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women” to protect women. As well as these examples, we have “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” and the “Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees” for refugees. Refugees are protected by these international laws. However, there is no legal system to protect IDPs.

 

   The situation of IDPs strongly reflects Western countries’ political interests. In the age of the Cold War, refugees were limited to people who escaped from Eastern countries to Western countries in search of freedom and therefore, they were people who met Western countries’ interests. They were the representation of a victory of freedom. Western countries fully used the concept of “refugees” in order to advertize “wonderful freedom of Western countries”. Therefore, Western countries played a major role in constructing the concept of refugees and adopting the Convention Relating the Status of Refugees and were willing to accept refugees from Eastern countries. Internally Displaced Persons, however, did not attract Western countries’ attention because they were not useful for the Cold War. For this reason, Western countries were not concerned with the problem of IDPs and a legal system specializing in IDPs has not been made until now.

 

   After the Cold War however, international society began to tackle the problem of IDPs. In 1998, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement was submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) by Francis Deng, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sudan. The Guiding Principles has been used and applied widely in various ways. In Angola, Burundi and Georgia, Guiding Principles were introduced into the level of national law and the UN adopted the Resolution which says;

 

Recognizes the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement as an important international framework for the protection of internally displaced persons and encourages all relevant actors to make use of the Guiding Principles when dealing with situations of internal displacement.

 

   However, the Guiding Principles has one decisive defect. It doesn’t have legal binding force at all. It is just a document and we can’t force nations to obey the Guiding Principle because it is not regarded as an international law. It is, actually, this situation that Francis Deng, who made the Guiding Principles, intended to highlight. The problem of Internally Displaced Persons is of great emergency, but it takes a long time and needs a lot of effort to construct a convention that has legal binding force. It is considered that Deng put priority on making some documentation on protecting IDPs over giving it legal binding force. He was concerned that taking actual measures against IDPs was postponed. This is why the Guiding Principles does not have legal binding force. It is true that the international society could take measures against IDPs more quickly in some cases, but it can also be a crucial defect of the Guiding Principle.

 

   The European Union and most of other developed countries agree with the idea that we regard the Guiding Principles as being equal to a treaty which has legal binding force. Angola, Burundi, and Georgia are practicing the Guiding Principles by domestic laws. Such countries as India, Sudan, and Syria, however, disagree with the Guiding Principles and emphasize that the Guiding Principles has no legal binding force. The trouble is that we can’t make these countries obey the Guiding Principles even though there are a lot of IDPs in these countries. In short, international society can do nothing to rescue IDPs unless the countries concerned agree with the Guiding Principles.

 

   What is the best way we should take in the future? Should we construct a conclusive convention for protecting IDPs? Or should we persuade all nations in the world into obeying the Guiding Principles? How can we persuade such nations, which are against the Guiding Principles? There are still so many problems relating to the legal systems.

 

       The Dilemma between Humanitarian Interventions

And the Principle of Non-Interference in Domestic Affairs

 

The principle of non-interference in domestic affairs is one of the most strongly established principles among international laws. A nation can dominate all of its domestic affairs and no other countries are allowed to interfere and they must respect the nation’s sovereignty. A resolution of the General Assembly says;

 

The sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity of States must be fully respected in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. In this context, humanitarian assistance should be provided with the consent of the affected country and in principle on the basis of an appeal by the affected country;

 

   Internally Displaced Persons, on the other hand, are people who are persecuted but stay inside the countries of origin for some reason. Therefore, we need to enter the countries when we rescue IDPs. However, we cannot enter the countries of IDPs easily because of the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs. According to the Resolution mentioned before, we need the consent of countries of IDPs and we cannot rescue IDPs without that consent regardless of the most serious persecution against IDPs. This is the second problem for IDPs.

   Recently, there has been a tendency to try to overcome this problem. The government of Japan is now proposing the concept of “Human Security”, and the government of Canada is trying to promote the concept of “the Responsibility to Protect” or “R2P”, both of which affirm the Humanitarian Intervention. These concepts have won quite a few countries’ agreements, but China, The Russian Federation, and other developing countries are against it, concerned that their sovereignty will be threatened. This is partly because of the Iraq War. Middle Eastern countries were severely damaged by the America’s “Humanitarian Intervention”. This is the dilemma between Humanitarian Intervention and the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs.

 

       CONCLUSION―The Future of the Problem of IDPs

 

   Internally Displaced Persons are people who are not rescued for only one difference―they have not crossed the border of their countries of origin. For this small but significant difference, IDPs are not rescued easily because there is no legal system to protect them and because of the existence of the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs. What can we do to solve this problem of IDPs?

   I would like to consider the problem at two levels. One is the government, or political level. At the government level, it is best to combine a long-term policy and short-term policy. As a long-term policy, a convention will be necessary in the future because it enables legal, full, effective and sustained protection of and assistance to IDPs. Settling a convention takes enormous time and effort and we will have numerous difficulties in settling it. It is likely that measures against IDPs will be delayed because of the time and effort needed to settle a convention. This is why we also need short-term policy to protect IDPs.

The other level is private organizations like Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) or Non-Political Organization (NPO).They can help IDPs with various things which the government or international society cannot do. They don’t have power to change laws but they can rescue them individually. Therefore, the function of such organizations as NGO and NPO is getting more and more important for rescuing IDPs.

   The problem of IDPs is highly complicated. We have to solve the problem one by one and international cooperation is the only way.

Internally Displaced Persons

By Noriko

To be a refugee from your country is to have your home and world ripped from you.  It is a terrible thing.  But to be a refugee trapped within the borders of your own country, unable to escape and cut off from outside aide by your own government; this is one of society’s great problems..

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