30^th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities – 22 to 24 March 2016

Debate on “Internally Displaced Persons: the hidden face of the refugee crisis”

Speech by Gert Westerveen, representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to the Council of Europe

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Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today on the topic of internally displaced persons as the hidden face of the refugee crisis.

Indeed, for the past year a tremendous amount of attention is being paid to the current refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.  The arrival of some 1 million asylum-seekers in Europe in 2015 has led, since April a year ago, to incessant media attention, and to an unprecedented number of ministerial summits. 

All this attention to a refugee crisis is merited, and should have started even before Spring 2015, which might have avoided the current problems Europe is faced with.

But while considering the refugee outflow from Syria, with some 4 million refugees in the immediate neighborhood and in Europe, we might forget that inside Syria there are over 6 million internally displaced persons.  Several thousands of these are in what is euphemistically being called “difficult to reach areas”, in find themselves in dire circumstances, and urgently in need of humanitarian assistance.

IDPs in Europe

But Europe has its own internally displaced persons, and many of these also are more or less “hidden” situations, which do not draw media attention, and which aren’t the subject of ministerial summits. 

Some estimates of internally displaced persons in Europe come to a figure of over 3 million.  While some 1.4 million persons became displaced due to the recent conflicts in the Crimean peninsula and in eastern Ukraine, and to the armed conflict in Georgia in 2008, most other situations of internal displacement are related to past conflicts.  The conflicts themselves have long stopped being active, but the effects are still being felt by many of the persons and societies concerned.  We are talking here of primarily of situations in Cyprus, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Russian Federation, and Serbia and Kosovo.

One of the difficulties with internal displacement is that while there is in most cases a clear start of displacement, either through an armed conflict breaking out, or at the occasion of a natural or man-made disaster, the end of situations of displacement is much more diffuse and difficult to determine.

This is different from refugee situations.  Refugee status is a legal status, with beginning and end clearly defined in the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees.  Once a refugee crosses an international border, he or she is an alien, with normally somewhat less rights than the nationals of the country where he/she finds himself.  This status normally ends with either the return to the country of nationality and the resumption of normal citizen status, or with obtaining the nationality of the country of refuge.

However, internal displacement is a factual situation.  Within the United Nations there is a definition of internal displacement, namely:

Internally displaced people are people or groups of people who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border.

But this definition does not tell us when displacement ends.  Does it end only when the person concerned is able to return to his her place of origin?  Or also when he/she is able to functions as a normal citizen, through establishing a new residence, and either starting a new job, or pursuing one’s previous job elsewhere?  Or only when all –legal or factual- problems connected to displacement have been resolved? Think of real estate property issues; lost legal documentation, such as diplomas or proof of entitlements to goods or services.  The undetermined nature of the possible ends to situations of displacement contributes to a large extent to situations of internal displacement disappearing from sight and attention after a number of years.

Need for solutions

However, the fact that 40 years after the partition of Cyprus, 30 years after the war in Bosnia, and 17 years after the Kosovo conflict we still speak of internal displacement in connection with these events, shows that displacement situations have become protracted in nature.  There is a need to invest more in solutions to situations of internal displacement.  Otherwise there is a risk that grievances are passed on from generation to generation, and that simmering conflicts are being kept alive.

When we talk about cross-border migration and refugees, we all realize the importance of durable solutions: the need to put an end to what made people refugees, and integrate them into host societies.  Situations of internal displacement need similar approaches to finding solutions.

Humanitarian assistance

Sudden displacement, be it because of conflict or because of natural disasters, requires in many cases humanitarian assistance, in terms of food, shelter, medical-, social-, and legal assistance.  What we have experienced in recent years, is that the current system of organizing humanitarian assistance is not functioning properly any more: there is a widening gap between needs and available resources.

In 2015, for example, 1.6 million Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon had their food rations cut and 750,000 Syrian refugee children in these countries could not attend school.

This is happening despite a sharp increase in humanitarian funding over the last 15 years.  In 2000, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded US$ 2 billion raised globally for humanitarian action.  By 2014 this amount had increased more than twelvefold to US$ 24.5 billion.  The world humanitarian aid budget for 2014 was significant for a number of reasons.  It was the largest ever recorded but, it also created the biggest ever shortfall with just 62 per cent of the total needs identified being met.  Never before has the world been so generous towards the needs of people affected by conflicts and disasters, and never before has generosity been so insufficient. The gap between needs and resources widened even further in 2015, when nearly half of the UN’s humanitarian appeals were left unmet.

In the face of this difficult situation, the Secretary-General of the UN appointed in September last a High-Level panel on Humanitarian Financing.  This panel published its report in January this year, which will be discussed during the forthcoming World Humanitarian Summit on 23-24 May this year in Istanbul.

The high-level panel has formulated recommendations to both donors and to aid organisations, suggesting a variety of ways to introduce improvements in current humanitarian assistance practices. 

UNHCR is intensively engaged in this process, which aims for greater flexibility by donors, greater transparency by agencies, and greater efficiency and effectiveness in outcomes. 

Given that local authorities are often in the forefront of assistance in situations of displacement, UNHCR hopes that the Congress will see an opportunity to support the necessary improvements in the humanitarian assistance and financing structures.  In that way, contributions may be made to assisting and finding solutions to displacement situations which all too often remain out of the spotlight.

Thank you.