Public Policies on Internally Displaced People in Situations of Regime-Induced Displacement

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), there were 38 million internally displaced people (IDPs) as of January 2015, almost double the reported number of refugees for the same period (19.5 million). The number of IDPs continues to grow as a result of changes in warfare increasingly targeting civilians, as well as the growing importance of internal conflicts compared to international conflicts. On the other hand, the extension of borders control and the increasing restrictions in asylum policies have progressively contained these populations within particular state borders. Additionally, the lack of legislative and institutional protection framework concerning these people in refugee-like situations but who are kept within their state’s borders, has aroused growing interest, principally among development and humanitarian actors. This interest has been accompanied by the emergence of a series of new rules and practices at different levels. Indeed, new instruments began being developed at the international level, principally with the emergence of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in 1998, while at the regional level, similar instruments have been adopted, notably in Africa, with the Protocol on the Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons in the Great Lake regions (2006) and the Kampala Convention (2009). Moreover, new policies and laws began being adopted by some countries at national level. Currently, 27 countries around the world have adopted policies and legislative instruments addressing the issue of IDPs, which represents more than a third of the countries affected by internal displacement (Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement). Nevertheless, this process of institutionalisation at the national level was non-linear and is not self-evident. Indeed, many states saw the emergence of this international IDPs protection regime with reluctance. Invoking their sovereignty, many state representatives were worried about the implications that such instruments might have in possible intrusion into their domestic affairs (Kälin 2014; Weiss and Korn 2006). Indeed, according to the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, while the State in which the people are displaced is the primary actor responsible for them, in the case where this State is unable or unwilling to do so, the international community has the right to intervene (Principle 25). Moreover, and perhaps, even more surprisingly, often internal displacement of population is generated by the national authorities themselves - the same authorities who are adopting policies for the protection of their IDPs. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to disentangle this puzzle by analysing three case studies where regime-induced displacement, defined by Orchard as situations when “the government or government-sponsored actors deliberately use coercive tactics to directly cause large numbers of their own citizens to flee their homes” (Orchard 2010: 43), have taken place at the same time as policies on internal displacement have been adopted. The three case studies include: Colombia, Iraq, and Uganda. More specifically, the paper will try to explain the emergence of these policies within the domestic political arena, by combining the literature on norm domestication in international relations, with the tools used for policy analysis and comparative politics.