IRIN Web Special on Internal Displacement

Development and internal displacement

While the GPs are clearly concerned with people who have been displaced as a result of natural or political catastrophes, some scholars have argued that the very dynamics of what is considered development sometimes displaces people.

Labelled development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR), Prof Anthony Oliver-Smith challenges both development theories hailing a triumphant globalisation, and the existing discourse on, and understanding of, IDPs. Oliver-Smith maintains that this phenomenon is extremely widespread and, largely unrecognised, disproportionately affects ethnic and racial minorities, and "a significant percentage of those who face removal, whatever the cause, frequently come from the most disadvantaged sectors of society".

This approach, which is being pursued by a growing number of social scientists, attempts to understand displacement which, for example, is the product of the oil industry in Nigeria and Sudan, construction of the Kariba Dam in Zimbabwe and the Tucurui Dam in Brazil, mining schemes in the Philippines, and tourism projects in Mexico. In most of these cases, state support for the projects was critical, opposition movements developed and sometimes took violent forms, and internal displacement was the result.

According to Young: "The UN agencies directly concerned with IDPs have not as yet taken on board such an understanding, but, conceptually, Oliver-Smith and others hold that displacement which is a product of development is not easily distinguished from displacement resulting directly from civil wars and the like."

"In the case of Sudan, for example, there has been widespread displacement in the western Upper Nile region as the government attempts to secure the area for expansion of the oil industry. The international community responds to the people displaced in this way as being a product of the country's civil war, but others might see their problem as a result of development."

Young argues that the response of the international community might be the same, but recognising development, albeit an elite-driven development that pays little heed to the interests of local residents, as a cause of displacement would considerably expand the numbers of officially acknowledged IDPs. This in turn could again expect to raise the concern of states with protecting their sovereignty, and might cause anxieties among UN agencies unwilling or unable to take on added responsibilities.

IDPs and cash flow

Not least of the problems facing IDPs, and particularly those in Africa, where the majority are to be found, has been the reduced availability of funding in the post-Cold War era. The reduced aid flows are generally associated with the continent's declining strategic significance, economic marginalisation, and donors' frustration with Africa. But in cases like Angola (which ranks along with Sudan as having the largest number of IDPs in the world), OCHA in a statement issued on 22 May 2001 attributed the unwillingness of donors to respond to its appeals to the failure of the resource-rich governments to make more of their own funds available.

And finally

The phenomenon of IDPs is gaining the attention of the academic and aid communities, and the GPs will assume a central stage in that consideration. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in cooperation with the Global IDP Project, is to convene a conference on 7 and 8 February 2003 in Trondheim, Norway to "identify the state-of-the-art and display the diversity of IDP-related research". [Further information]

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