Internal displacement & the right to protection

Abstract

In over 40 countries, in nearly all regions of the world, 20-25 million people are displaced as a result of conflict and human rights violations. Millions more have been uprooted due to natural or man-made disasters. Due to the growing awareness within the international system to the plight of internally displaced people, a special representative on internal displacement was appointed in 1992 to recommend an effective system of protection and assistance to them. Like many of the internally displaced People, the Kurds of northern Iraq have had their fare share of problems not only acquainted with displacement, but also acquainted by living in a developing country, with a ruling dictatorship. Their actual plight stretches far before the initiation of ethnic cleansing campaigns in Iraq during the later 1980's, but to the initial formulation of modem Middle Eastern states and the curving up of the Ottoman Empire during the early 20th century. Internally displaced people are protected and safeguarded under international law and its branches; human rights law, humanitarian law, and refugee law. Furthermore, their protection will be enhanced once the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement became a binding set of normative rules on all states. Thus, eroding by time the concept of non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and leading to the indictment of all those responsible for internal displacement.