Africa’s Great Lakes region: A development response to forced displacement

At the end of 2013, about 3.3 million people remained forcibly displaced within the Great Lakes region (GLR) of Africa. Of these, 82 percent were internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 18 percent were refugees. Despite some cases of more successful integration, displacement-affected persons across the GLR face ongoing development challenges. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular, while the protection of IDPs has been at the heart of the international agenda in the country for years, almost no progress has been made in either preventing new displacements or arriving at durable solutions for uprooted people.

On April 21, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and the Global Program on Forced Displacement at the World Bank Group discussed assistance and protection conditions for refugees, IDPs, returnees, and host communities in the Great Lakes region. They examined the opportunity to pursue a development response to forced displacement within existing regional political frameworks, processes, and bodies such as the African Union, and the UN Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region.

Speakers included Stacey White, author of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement report “Now What? The International Response to Internal Displacement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” and Joanna de Berry and Cordelia Chesnutt, contributors to the March 2015 Global Program on Forced Displacement report “Forced Displacement in the Great Lakes Region.” Elizabeth Ferris, senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, moderated the event and offered opening remarks.