Civil society initiatives can improve national laws and policies for IDPs
Lawyers associations and NGOs around the world can play an important role in promoting better laws and policies in their own countries for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Take, for example, the recent initiative in the South Caucasus, home to more than a million IDPs, where teams of lawyers from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan evaluated their national laws and administrative regulations in terms of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and came up with recommendations for legal reform.
Their findings are the basis of a new study(1) , published by the American Society of International Law in collaboration with the Brookings-SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR).
The idea for the study arose at a regional seminar on Internal Displacement in the South Caucasus, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2000. During the following two-year period, local lawyers analysed their national laws in terms of the Guiding Principles to determine whether legislative reforms were needed to enhance legal protection for IDPs. Professor Walter Kälin, author of the Annotations to the Guiding Principles, chaired the process, while GYLA acted as Project Coordinator; OSCE/ODIHR and the Brookings-SAIS Project on Internal displacement provided overall supervision and support.
The new study includes the English translations of the lawyers' reports and the summaries of roundtable discussions convened in Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan at which the lawyers presented their findings. Among the major issues they addressed are rights relating to citizenship, return or resettlement, property restitution and compensation, education, employment, housing and political participation.
In Armenia, the lawyers recommended the drafting of a specific national law on IDPs that would establish a definition of IDPs and clearly delineate their rights. They also proposed amendments to a variety of existing laws to better protect IDPs. In Georgia, where there already exists an extensive body of law relevant to IDPs, the lawyers recommended that IDPs be guaranteed the right to vote in local and parliamentary elections without loss of assistance benefits. And they called for: improvements in the government's registration system to enable IDPs to more effectively exercise their rights; the elaboration of standards for adequate living quarters; and legal provisions to regulate property restitution. In Azerbaijan, which since 1992 has had a law on refugees and IDPs, the lawyers recommended separate laws for IDPs and refugees in order to clarify and better ensure the protection of both groups. They also suggested revising the existing legal definition of IDPs to include those displaced for reasons other than conflict, called for special protections for those IDPs with particular vulnerabilities, and proposed legislation for IDP return and property compensation.
The roundtable held in each country brought together senior government officials, parliamentarians, local NGOs, IDP representatives, and international organisations and experts.The lawyers' recommendations are being studied by the governments and have already begun to stimulate important legislative reform, for instance in Georgia with regard to voting rights. The process is also providing important follow-up to the recommendations of the Representative of the UN Secretary-General on IDPs who, in his missions to all three South Caucasus countries, had recommended the development of national policies and programmes in accordance with the Guiding Principles. Just as significant, the Representative recommended stronger government partnerships with civil society.
Overall, this process of legal review in the South Caucasus provides a truly noteworthy example of the significant contribution that civil society can make to promoting more effective laws and policies for the internally displaced. It is to be hoped that the publication of the results of this process will stimulate similar initiatives in other parts of the world and prove instructive to lawyers, parliamentarians and IDP organisations who observe a need in their own countries to improve national laws and policies for IDPs.The Brookings-SAIS Project on Internal Displacement would be interested to hear from lawyers groups in other parts of the world ready to undertake similar processes.
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