How should we respond to states that deliberately displace their own populations? While the
international refugee regime is anchored in the 1951 Refugee Convention and the work of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Convention is silent on the question of state
culpability, and the UNHCR’s Statute established its entirely non-political character. However, four
forms of complementary enforcement mechanisms exist that could be used to limit and deter
deliberate displacement by states: the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR)
mechanism; soft and regional law, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement;
international criminal law at the individual level, where deportation and forcible transfers have been
defined as potential war crimes and crimes against humanity; and the UN Security Council, which has
progressively defined the movements of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) as potential
threats to regional and international peace and security. Critical to the Security Council response
is the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, adopted by the UN member states in the 2005
World Summit Outcome Document. Importantly, all four of these mechanisms already exist, but
they have only rarely been used to hold states and individuals accountable for displacement.
Thus, generating political will to expand their use provides a direct way of ensuring that refugees
and other forced migrants are better protected
