National and Regional Laws and Policies
on Internal Displacement
INDEX
Since the publication of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in 1998 and following their comprehensive dissemination, a small but growing number of national governments have begun to express their commitment to addressing internal displacement, protecting the rights of the internally displaced, and implementing the Guiding Principles through national legislation and policy.
| National Laws and Policies Database |
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This website contains a compilation and summary of national laws, policies, decrees and other official documents relating to internal displacement. Obtained from publicly available websites, as well as through the generous assistance of governmental and non-governmental representatives in-country, the website currently covers over fifty documents from twenty countries. This list is not exhaustive and will be updated as new laws and policies become publicly available and as new instruments are adopted.
By providing links to these instruments, we seek to provide a variety of examples of how countries have responded to situations of internal displacement through the development of laws and policies. In addition, the website is intended to provide easy access for researchers, lawyers and advocates to documents that may not be otherwise accessible.
It is important that the examples are understood in the light of the political, cultural and economic context of the countries concerned, bearing in mind that the approach adopted to protecting particular rights and needs of the internally displaced in one country may not be the most appropriate for another.
Indeed, whether countries adopt a law or policy may depend on the specific context of internal displacement in that country. The benefit of policies and similar regulations is that they are flexible, they allow states to respond rapidly to emergencies, and often create a system that is readily adaptable to the particularities of local populations and their needs. For policies and other non-legislative measures to be most effective, however, they must be based on constitutional and/or legislative recognition of the rights of the internally displaced. Without such a foundation, policies risk being ignored, overturned or otherwise affected by the vagaries of political change in government.
These documents are not presented as model texts, or examples of best practice. The inclusion of these instruments does not guarantee that the text is in all respects in conformity with the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement or with international human rights and humanitarian law generally.