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DEFINITION AND CATEGORIES
IDP (Internally Dispalced Persons)
working definition is recent, considering that the issue of Internally
Dispalced Persons was linked before to that of Refugees.
Definition of the Analytical Report of the
Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons of 14 February 1992
:
"Persons who have been forced to flee their
homes suddenly or unexpectedly in large numbers, as a result of armed conflict,
internal strife, systematic violations of human rights or natural or made-man
disasters; and who are within
the territory of their own country" By
defining an internally displaced person as one who is forced from his home, the
1992 definition needlessly complicated the search for acceptable--not
ideal--solutions. The IDP definition, unlike the refugee definition, did not
mention a government's willingness or ability to protect displaced persons. By
making location the essence of the IDP definition, and not the right to be
protected, it did not offer the restoration of one's rights in another location
as a durable solution for internally displaced people. |
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Living in displacement |
The new Guiding Principles include a
definition that addresses many of these flaws. It defines internally displaced
persons as:
"Persons or groups of persons who have been
forced or obliged to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in
particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict,
situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or
human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized
state border".The 1998 definition, although not formally endorsed at this
writing, vastly improves the 1992 definition, particularly because it drops
problematic language such as "suddenly or unexpectedly in large numbers," and
adds language, such as "places of habitual residence," so that the focus is
broader than the home per se. Its more nuanced and realistic description of the
causes of displacement includes as IDPs not only persons directly forced to
flee but also persons obliged to leave to avoid generalized violence and human
rights abuses.
The definition retains persons displaced by
natural or human made disasters. In part, this is because the definition is
descriptive of the term "internally displaced person" itself. Unlike the term
"refugee", which denotes a legal status delineating a particular subset of
externally displaced persons, persons forced to leave their homes because of
earthquakes or dam projects are, indeed, descriptively "internally displaced
persons" whether or not their reasons for flight are similar to those of
refugees. Unless the international community were to coin a different term--ten
years ago, Lance Clark writing in the 1988 World Refugee Survey suggested the
term "internal refugees"--the definition of "internally displaced person" must
encompass people displaced within their own country for reasons that have
nothing to do with armed conflict or human rights violations.
So the task shifts from defining the
internally displaced to establishing criteria to determine who among them are
of particular concern to the international community. Once such criteria exist,
the international community then needs to determine the acceptable solutions to
their plight. In short, we need reference points indicating when internally
displaced persons start, and when they stop, being of particular concern to the
international community.
Informations from the US Committee for
Refugees (USCR), cf www.refugees.org
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