Blog
Stangers in Their Own Land

by Francis M. Deng

O ver the last decade, the international community has been confronted with the global crisis of internal displacement, involving some 25 million people in over 40 countries around the world. These people have been uprooted by internal armed conflicts, communal violence, and egregious violations of human rights, but have not crossed international borders. Invariably, they are exposed to severe threats to their physical and psychological security, gross violations of human rights, and denial of basic needs to shelter, food, medicine, sanitation, potable water, occupation, and education. Had they moved across international borders, they would be considered refugees for whom the international community has wellestablished legal and institutional frameworks and mechanisms for their protection and assistance. But because they remain within their state borders, they are ironically assumed to be the responsibility of their governments, even though those same governments are often the source of their plight.

In most cases, the affected countries suffer from an acute crisis of national identity emanating from severe social, ethnic, cultural and religious cleavages. These cleavages determine who is treated with dignity as a citizen, and who is denied a sense of belonging on equal footing in the national identity framework.

International Response

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights decided in 1992 to place the issue of internal displacement on its agenda and requested the Secretary-General to appoint a Representative on Internally Displaced Persons to study the problem and recommend ways in which the United Nations system and the international community in general might respond to the needs of the internally displaced. I was honoured to have been appointed by the SecretaryGeneral as his representative on the issue.

​The United Nations Commission on Human Rights decided in 1992 to place the issue of internal displacement on its agenda and requested the Secretary-General to appoint a Representative on Internally Displaced Persons to study the problem and recommend ways in which the United Nations system and the international community in general might respond to the needs of the internally displaced. I was honoured to have been appointed by the SecretaryGeneral as his representative on the issue.

Working in close collaboration with a team of international legal experts and in a broad-based process of consultation involving representatives of relevant UN agencies, regional organizations, and non-governmental organizations, we developed the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. These principles restate the relevant standards in existing international human rights law, humanitarian law, and analogous refugee law. We have also made recommendations for institutional arrangements, presenting various options, ranging from the creation of a specialized agency for the internally displaced, to the designation of an existing agency to assume full responsibility for them, to a collaborative approach that utilizes the capacities of existing agencies. This last option proved to be the preferred one.

Since the Guiding Principles were presented to the Commission on Human Rights in 1995, and taken note of by the Commission, they have been very well received by the agencies of the UN, regional organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations. The coordination needed for the collaborative institutional arrangements to be effective has also evolved significantly. The reform agenda of the Secretary-General designated the Emergency Relief Coordinator and UnderSecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, as the head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to function as the focal point in the system charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the displaced are protected and assisted. A series of other measures included initially, the establishment of an Inter-Agency Working Group on Internally Displaced Persons, later succeeded by the more high profile Inter-Agency Network and more recently, by an IDP Unit at OCHA to facilitate the role of the Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Network.

As Representative of the SecretaryGeneral on Internally Displaced Persons, I have continued to play the catalytic role of advocating the cause of the IDPs and have focused the activities of my mandate in four interconnected areas: promoting the dissemination and application of the Guiding Principles; appraising the performance of the operational agencies and how they can be made more effective on the ground; undertaking country missions to assess the conditions of the displaced and plead their case with governments, organizations, donors, and all those whose mandates and scope of activities impact on them; and conducting studies into various aspects of the crisis of internal displacement and the response to it at various levels.

The Responsibility of Sovereignty

Considering that the problem of internal displacement is inherently internal and therefore under state sovereignty, our approach has been to affirm respect for the sovereignty of the state, but to stipulate sovereignty as a concept of responsibility for ensuring the protection and the general welfare of the citizens and all those under state jurisdiction. If governments cannot do so for reasons of lack of capacity, they should invite or at least welcome international assistance.

When governments lack the requisite capacity or the political will to discharge their responsibility, whether on their own or in cooperation with the international community, and masses of their people face severe hardships and even the threat of death, they cannot expect the international community to remain indifferent. International involvement can range from diplomatic intercession, to various forms and degrees of coercion extending to military intervention in extreme cases. The best way to protect national sovereignty is therefore to discharge the responsibilities associated with it and to seek the assistance of the international community, as needed.

Opportunities in Crisis

As much as the problem of internal displacement is a consequence of deeper structural problems that generate conflicts and gross violations of human rights, it also poses a challenge for addressing those problems in the interest of nationbuilding. To the extent that peace, unity, stability and the viability of the nation are overriding objectives, a responsible and wise leadership must not only accept, but indeed initiate and lead, a major reform with the view to establishing a new basis for sharing power, national resources, services and opportunities for equitable development.

Along with the current efforts at assisting and protecting displaced populations, there is a need to urge and assist governments to address the root causes of displacement by seeking in earnest a constructive resolution of the conflicts through a just and lasting peace. Beyond that, the challenge of nation building calls for the establishment of a system of governance that ensures democratic participation, respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, and equitable opportunities for sustainable development.

Francis Mading Deng has served, since 1992, as the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons. He is also a distinguished professor and Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the CUNY Graduate Center Brookings Project on Internal Displacement at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies of The Graduate Center, City University of New York.