Unlocking Solutions for the Internally Displaced

For more than forty-five years, UNHCR has been operationally involved with forcibly displaced persons within their own countries. As early as 1972, the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) called on the High Commissioner for Refugees to extend assistance to both returning refugees and “persons displaced within the country”.2 That same year, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) commended UNHCR’s “efficient role in the coordination of relief and resettlement operations of refugees and other displaced persons”3. In following years, UNHCR included internally displaced persons (IDPs) in its programmes, namely those for refugees returning to Sudan (1972), Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique (1974), as well as Vietnam and Laos (1975); given that IDPs and returning refugees were often living in the same areas, “it was neither reasonable nor feasible to treat the two categories differently4”.