Internally Displaced Persons and the Right-Based Approach: An Inquiry into the Legal Platforms of the African Union

Abstract

The present chapter discusses the ascending number of Internally Displaced Persons in the African Union. The emergence of this category links with the rising concerns for climate refugees. Environmental Internally Displaced People have become one of the most challenging issues of the modern world. The current chapter critically evaluates the Kampala convention for Internally Displaced People (IDPs, henceforth) due to climatic change. It is examined from the point of property relations (in the form of land or housing or relocation) based on the right to return for IDPs. The method imparts a qualitative engagement with the text concerned. It falls in the terrain of discourse analysis where we trace how the sense of return or restitution or repatriation can be raised in the Kampala Convention as well as other relevant documents. The chapter provides critical insight into the claim for Rights than Guidelines for Internally Displaced Persons. It maps the basic rights under the Kampala Convention, the 1998 Guiding Principles, Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), and the Pinheiro Principles. The conventions addressing their concerns prescribe principles that are not legally binding among the States to follow. It becomes important to politically assert a Right based measure than posing an economic argument for a particular social group.

Bendangwapang Ao, The scholar is an ICSSR Doctoral Fellow. Namrata Saha has submitted dissertation based on Policy Analysis of Intellectual Property Rights and Universities.