Thesis title: THE PROTECTION OF INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
The number of people displaced within their national States (IDPs) as well as their protection needs are increasing worldwide. Despite this state of affairs, however, the legal protection framework for this group of vulnerable people has been underdeveloped. While the existence of protection needs is no longer a dispute, the mechanism to address them remains a diverging debate. Some scholars advocate for the establishment of a specific international regime for IDPs, akin to the one established by the 1951 Refugee Convention. Others, on the other hand, oppose this idea; they argue that treating IDPs as a separate category of people would necessarily undermine the progress made so far by relevant regimes of international law. According to them, protection standards existing under international law are sufficient; IDPs’ rights are mainly violated because of States’ unwillingness to comply with those standards.
This research has analysed critically the extent to which existing protection standards contained in relevant regimes of international law address the IDPs protection needs. It has also examined how human rights treaty bodies have been using these protection standards in their decisions on cases involving forced displacement. In addition, the research has examined the mechanisms established by the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance to IDPs (Kampala Convention), in order to see the extent to which the standards established by this regional treaty attempts to fill the gaps left by international law.
The research has found that certain regimes of law such as International Human Rights Law, Humanitarian Law, and Disaster Law provide significant protection standards for IDPs and that the non-compliance with those existing norms contributes significantly to the rise of forced displacement phenomenon and its effect. However, it has found that beyond the lack of compliance by States, there are also other normative gaps that need to be bridged.
With regard to the consensus on the establishment of a specific instrument, the thesis recommends the adoption of a shift from the “up-down” to the “bottom-up” consensus approach, that is, the adoption of a regional consensus approach in the establishment of a specific legal framework. It also recommends the strengthening of regional human rights bodies to effectively apply existing norms and potential treaties adopted at regional level.