Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PROTECTION
FOR INTERNALLY
DISPLACED PERSONS
302838801X
The Refugee Policy Group (RPG) is an independent, non-proHt
organization established in 1982 to improve international and domestic
policy on refugee issues. The first center of its kind anywhere, RPG
informs policymakers, program implementors and researchers through its
reports, briefings , meetings and resource center.
HUMAN RIGHTS
PROTECTION
FOR INTERNALLY
DISPLACED PERSONS
ROBERTA COHEN
JUNE 199 1
RPG
Refugee Policy Group
CENTER FOR POLICY
ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH
ON REFUGEE ISSUES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
NOTES 37
APPENDIX I 44
APPENDIX II 46
INTRODUCTION
Ethnic Persecution
Forcible Relocations
For many human rights groups, the problems facing the internally
displaced are outside their traditional areas of concern. Some regard the
deliberate starvation by a government of hundreds of thousands of its
citizens as a "humanitarian" problem better left to relief agencies whereas
they will address the imprisonment of a few hundred on political grounds
as a human rights problem. Victims of war and famine are often not
seen as legitimate subjects of human rights concern. Amnesty
International, for example, the largest of the human rights NGOs, deals
essentially with prisoners of conscience. The organization is generally
precluded from addressing the protection needs of internally displaced
persons unless they are subjected to detention, imprisonment or extra-
judicial executions.
Humanitarian Organizations
O
ce
iff of the Secretary-General. By means of his good offices role,
the Secretary-General can raise issues privately with governments, speak
out publicly, and also undertake fact-finding missions. In 1984, for
example, the Secretary-General appealed to Iran and Iraq to cease
deliberate military attacks on civilian areas. In 1985, he issued a public
statement to protest "recurrent reports of arbitrary detention, banishment,
[and] uprooting of families" in South Africa. In the conflict in the
southern Sudan, the Secretary-General convened a meeting in Khartoum
in 1989 to devise measures to avert further "starvation and death" of
"populations displaced or adversely affected by the conflict ."31
There are other treaty monitoring bodies that could play a more
active role in protecting internally displaced persons, in particular the
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
(CERD), and the Committee on the Rights of the Child. The
Convention on the Rights of the Child contains specific provisions
applicable to internally displaced children. For example, it requires states
to protect civilian populations in armed conflicts and "take all measures to
ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed
conflict ." UNICEF, which regularly provides assistance and protection to
women and children in armed conflict situations, is given a special role in
the implementation of the Convention.
!it S|C 5i l!
| ;|t t e
* * *!| * * # » * * * * * *>|*
* * * :* * * * * * *
6. Ibid. p. 122. The Statutes of the International Red Cross & Red
Crescent Movement further affirm that ICRC "may take any humanitarian
initiative which comes within its role as a specifically neutral and
independent institution." This could become the basis for an expanded
protection role for ICRC in non-international armed conflicts and
situations of internal strife , see ICRC working document, "Persons
Displaced Within Their Own Countries as a Result of Armed Conflict or
Disturbances," Geneva, 6 May 1991; and Michel Veuthey,
"Implementation and Enforcement of Humanitarian Law and Human
Rights Law in Non-International Armed Conflicts : The Role of the
International Committee of the Red Cross," The American University Law
Review. Vol. 33, No. 1, Fall 1983.
12. See, for example, El Salvador's Other Victims: The War on the
Displaced . Americas Watch & Lawyers Committee for
International Human Rights, April 1984; To Die in Afghanistan.
Helsinki Watch, December 1985; "Violations of the Rules of War
by the Khmer Rouge," Asia Watch, April 1990; Angola: Violations
of the Laws of War by Both Sides. Africa Watch, April 1989; and
Sudan: A Human Rights Disaster . Africa Watch, March 1990.
For Amnesty International's monitoring of the human rights abuses
of both sides in civil conflicts , see Sudan: Human Rights
Violations in the Context of Civil War. Amnesty International,
London, December 1989.
14. See Larry Minear, "Civil Strife and Humanitarian Aid: A Bruising
Decade," World Refugee Survey. 1989 in Review. U.S. Committee
40
16. See Raymond Bonner, "Famine," New Yorker. March 13, 1989.
18. Douglas Hurd, "The Middle East: Lessons to be Learnt from the
Gulf War," The House. 29 April 1991.
23. See Theodor Meron, "Draft Model Declaration on Internal Strife ,"
International Review of the Red Cross, January-February 1988.
24. See Meron, ibid.; see also the recommendations of the Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights, supra note 4; and
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, "International Law and Mass Population
Transfers," The Harvard International Law Journal. Vol. 16, No. 2,
Spring 1975, pp. 207-258. The article proposes a Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Mass Expulsion.
25. See Philip Alston, "International Law and the Right to Food," Food
as a Human Right, ed. by Asbjorn Eide et al., The United Nations
University, Tokyo, 1984.
27. See General Findings and Title II of Hall's "Freedom from Want
Act," Office of Congressman Tony P. Hall, Washington DC, March
22, 1991. See also Hall, "Sudan's Needless Tragedy," Christian
Science Monitor, April 1, 1991.
30. Ibid. See also B.G. Ramcharan, "Strategies for the International
Protection of Human Rights in the 1990s," Human Rights
Quarterly. Vol. 13, No. 2, May 1991.
40. See Flora Lewis, "How to Stop a Civil War," New York Times.
May 31, 1991. Marc Fisher, "European Security -Crisis Policy Set,"
Washington Post. June 21, 1991; and Michael Wise, "Austria Calls
f First Test of Conflict Prevention Center, Washington Post, July
o
r
1, 1991.
41. Jeri Laber, "Refugees in the Soviet Union," New York Times. June
24, 1990.
S/RES/688 (1991)
E/CN.4/1991/L.34
26 February 1991
Original : ENGLISH