To browse Academia. An option for making of a binding treaty at the UN level was said to be avoided due to the sensitivity of the matter to most member states and the accompanying slow process in traditional treaty-making and ratification which may take decades to come into force. The first category concerns gaps that arise out of lack of explicit norms addressing identifiable needs of IDPs. The second category of insufficient coverage concerns those cases where a general norm exists but a corollary provision specifically addressing concerns of particular importance to IDPs has not been articulated.
That is, unlike the Refugee Agency, no single organ exists which is centrally and primarily responsible for matters of IDPs worldwide. Responsibilities of giving assistance and protection to IDPS have been divided among the various UN agencies previously under the 'collaborative approach' and recently under what is known as the 'cluster approach.
At the regional especially African level, the protection and assistance concerns of IDPs have not attracted closer attention for long time. I witnessed the historic moment of the adoption of the Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa. The importance of this Convention cannot be underestimated.
The Convention is a tremendous achievement and a beacon of hope for the almost 12 million people in Africa internally displaced by conflict and the many more internally displaced by natural disasters, and hopefully serves as a model for other regions, too. Internally displaced persons IDPs are people who because of circumstances beyond their control have had to flee their traditional homes as a result of natural or man-made threats to their lives. The general perception is that IDPs are not offered any protection by international law.
This article argues that though there may not be too many laws specifically enacted at the global level to cater for the plight of IDPs but this category of people are well protected within the extant juris corpus of international laws; further, the Africa Union by virtue of the Kampala Convention which came into force on 6 th December has taken the bull by the horn to ameliorate the burden of IDPs, the said convention is the first of its kind at the international level.
