Unlocking the Protracted Displacement of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: An Overview

The protracted displacement of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) constitutes a pressing yet seemingly intractable challenge facing the international community.1 In countries where state fragility, conflict, and persecution have persisted for years, the majority of the world's refugees and internally displaced people live in conditions of protracted exile with little or no prospect of a durable solution to their predicament. Usually marginalised and often subject to the violation, or a lack of protection of human, economic, social, and cultural rights, well over half the world's 10 million refugees are currently to be found in protracted exile. Enduring conditions of internal displacement persist in over 40 countries including three (Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Sudan), each with over one million IDPs throughout the decade ending in 2010.2 Conceiving a label “protracted displacement” implies a “state of exception”, situations which somehow depart from a more “normal”...