Internally Displaced Persons of Africa

Africa has a longstanding displacement problem a large part of which arise from the false drawing of the state borders by the colonial powers. Yes, instead of taking into account of peoples’ choices, ethnicities, cultural ties or religions European states considered only their interests when they were assigning the borders of African states. Religious or ethnic groups were divided by state borders which created conflicts among different tribes or entities. Natural resources were distributed according to the wishes of outsiders as a result of which governments and different power centres got engaged with struggles of interests forcing people to leave their homes.

According to the IDMC, there were over 10.4 million IDPs in the 18 sub-Saharan countries in 2012 which is equal to almost a third of the global total. While the number of the refugees in Africa has been decreasing in the last decades, number of the IDPs has been increasing. Most affected states by internal displacement are Central African Republic (the CAR), Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the DRC), Somalia, and Sudan. Only in the DRC there are around 2.7 million IDPs. In Sudan this number is 2.5 million. Great Lakes region is the most affected part of the continent. The biggest reasons of displacements in Africa are the conflicts and violence emerging from the struggles for political power and natural resources.

Having paid badly for the thoughtless historical mistakes of Europeans for centuries, Africans have recently started to realize that they can solve their own problems better than anybody else. Since the beginning of the 2000s there have been initiatives to answer the question of IDPs in the continent. While some African states made legislations according to the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement some others drafted IDP policies or laws. But there is one very recent effort in the continent that what I believe is one of the most significant achievements in the history of the IDPs problem. Signed in 2009 and entered into force in 2012 after its ratification by 15 states, Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa or simply Kampala Convention has become the first binding international agreement related to the IDPs.

Kampala Convention is inspired by the Guiding Principles, however contrary to the latter; the former is binding and assigns responsibilities on the signing parties. Kampala Convention defines Internally Displaced Persons as “persons or groups of persons 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” (Kampala Convention, Article 1(k). Convention gives the biggest responsibilities to the states but also sets out rights and duties for the related actors such as armed groups, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), international organisations and the AU.

According to the Kampala Convention, CSOs can play an important role at the every phase of the displacement. CSOs can not only provide shelter, food and education but also advocate the rights of the IDPs worldwide. Armed groups, on the other hand, were given obligations to respect the rights of IDPs. Host communities and their needs were not forgotten. They are the people who share their homes with the displaced and most of the IDPs in Africa are actually assisted by these people. Kampala Convention notes that “States Parties shall assess or facilitate the assessment of the needs and vulnerabilities of internally displaced persons and of host communities, in cooperation with international organizations or agencies.” (Kampala Convention, Article 5(5).

Displaced people in Africa have a non-static character which means that today’s IDPs might be tomorrow’s refugees or reverse. Neighbouring countries assumes the protection of refugees flowing from each other while dealing with their own IDP problems. It should be noted that if a state is reluctant to take care of its own IDPs, it will be even more reluctant to take care of other states’ refugees. So, this truth must be taken into consideration next time when making international agreements and IDPs should be included in the protection circles. I hope that lessons are learned from African Kampala Convention and a legally binding international agreement is created in the level of the UN related to the IDPs.