| The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement have been used by many international, regional and national authorities to identify and protect the rights of the internally displaced. A wealth of support for the norms underlying the Guiding Principles exists in the resolutions of international and regional bodies, recommendations of treaty bodies, the diplomatic representations of states, judicial decisions of courts and the laws of a small but growing number of states. In order to be of use to policymakers, advocates and practitioners, these opinions, decisions and other documents have been compiled, organized, and made accessible on this website.
By facilitating the application of the Guiding Principles and the rights which they contain, this database will contribute to the long-term development of the customary international law on internal displacement. As the authorities in this area increase, the Guiding Principles will be seen more and more as an instrument that reflects existing law and state practice about particular aspects of the rights of the internally displaced.
Categories of documents
1. Documents referring to the Guiding Principles
There are three broad categories of documents included in the database. The first category includes all documents and statements of international, regional and national bodies and authorities that refer to the Guiding Principles. The documents in this category date from 1998—the year that the Guiding Principles were presented to the UN Commission on Human Rights.
2. Documents referring to the rights of the internally displaced
The second category includes all documents and statements referring to the individual rights upon which the Guiding Principles are based. An example would be documents relevant to the right to education in situations of internal displacement, although not referring specifically to the Guiding Principles. This category encompasses a much larger number of documents than the first and is a broader source of documents. Further, it is not limited in time to the development of the Guiding Principles but includes documents predating the Guiding Principles. However, this category is limited to the extent that all documents relate to internal displacement and does not simply refer to human rights or humanitarian principles generally.
The second category includes the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement: Annotations (2000). Prepared by Walter Kälin, current Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, the Annotations set out the legal sources that form the basis of the Guiding Principles. The database version of the Annotations is hyperlinked, allowing researchers to access all materials relevant to each principle by clicking on the principle and accessing a list of relevant documents.
3. Secondary sources on the Guiding Principles
The third category of documents encompasses all relevant secondary sources about the Guiding Principles. Such sources include articles, books, legal commentaries, interviews, transcripts and related materials.
Currently, the website provides users access to all the documents in category one and to many, but far from all, of the documents in category two. In the second phase of the development of this website, ISIM and the Brookings-Bern Project will enable users to access a substantial number of additional category two documents and, for the first time, category three documents. |
