Saturday 14 November 2009

African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (23 October 2009)

ASIL, 14 November 2009


Click here for document (approximately 27 pages)


On October 23, 2009, the African Union (AU) approved the Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa. The Convention will come into force within 30 days of ratification by fifteen of the fifty-three AU member states. The Convention aims to “[p]romote and strengthen regional and national measures to prevent or mitigate, prohibit and eliminate root causes of internal displacement as well as provide for durable solutions” and to “[e]stablish a legal framework for preventing internal displacement, and protecting and assisting internally displaced persons in Africa.”

The adoption of the Convention is a major regional human rights development which had as its basis the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (Guiding Principles) initially promulgated in 1998. The Guiding Principles, founded on international humanitarian and human rights law, are guidelines used by international organizations and governments to effectively help and protect IDPs. According to the Guiding Principles, IDPs are

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.

The reliance on the Guiding Principles is clear from the text of the Convention. Like the Guiding Principles, the Convention obligates all member states to protect IDPs in any type of armed internal conflict or natural disasters, including “[d]isplacement caused by any act, event, factor, or phenomenon of comparable gravity to all of the above and which is not justified under international law, including human rights and international humanitarian law” (cf.Convention, Article 4(4)(h) and Guiding Principles, Scope and Purpose, para. 2).

While the Convention is a big step toward codifying the Guiding Principles, some have criticized its weak accountability mechanism. This is especially troubling given that more than eleven million internally displaced persons are in Africa.

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