Development actors can facilitate the long-term, systemic changes that are needed to reintegrate displaced persons back into communities and to ensure they can benefit from national systems and support structures. It also places the emphasis back where it rightfully belongs: on the governments who bear the primary duty to provide for the rights and needs of their displaced citizens and residents.
But at the same time, we cannot ignore that in many of the contexts where humanitarian actors operate, the government has been party to the conflict or implicated in driving displacement. Embarking on development approaches that treat the government as the primary partner (or, in the case of development banks, as the client) therefore needs to be approached carefully.
To this end, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has outlined five steps we believe could be taken to safeguard protection in development-oriented approaches to solutions to internal displacement.
For more information, please contact Caelin Briggs in the NRC Geneva office.
