Developing an International System for Internally Displaced Persons

Abstract

A pressing new problem came onto the international agenda at the end of the cold war, persons forced from their homes by conflict and human rights violations who remain uprooted and at risk within the borders of their own countries. The international system created after the Second World War to protect and assist refugees, people who flee across borders, did not extend to internally displaced persons (IDPs). Over the past fifteen years, substantial efforts have been made to create an international system to respond to the needs of the world's 20 to 25 million IDPs, but a long way remains to go in resolving issues of sovereignty, legal frameworks, institutional arrangements and strategies to protect people under assault in their own countries.