Whilst international customary and treaty laws have been quite concise and clear regarding civilian protection and the obligation of relevant parties toward the non-combatant population where military operations take effect, little has been written on what kind of responsibilities the authorities have toward refugees and internally displaced persons in the areas they are targeting.
With conflicts becoming ever more violent for those who are not part of a belligerent group and do not want to join the fighting factions, displacement has become one of the most salient issues the world is being faced with. Mass exodus from cities or whole provinces that have succumbed to wars of attrition, instability, and armed violence has meant that 79.5 million people have been uprooted from the environments they grew up in and lived their whole lives, leaving behind their possessions and many times even more tragically their loved ones.
Yet, while it is clear that by law displaced people have the right to apply for asylum anywhere and that states need to adhere to certain provisions associated with hosting recognised refugees, according to the internationally ratified refugee conventions, there are no comprehensive frameworks governing the conduct of the actors whose actions might be the primary cause of displacement.
In military terms, displacement might fall under the preoperative planning phase. Prior to organising an armed action such as individual airstrikes or more elaborate counterinsurgency operations, army commanders need to take into account the collateral damage their actions are going to cause by the potential targeting of infrastructure crucial to civilian survival and the general harm that non-combatants might suffer ranging from injury to death.
As far as refugees and IDPs are concerned, the obligations toward them are implicit. Firstly, most refugees and IDPs fall under the non-combatant status, therefore, they enjoy the same protection rights afforded to civilians caught in conflict. Crucially, refugee and IDP camps should not be targeted. Secondly, in the planning phase, armed forces need to consider a rough estimate of how many people would eventually become displaced, the camps in the surrounding areas and how they are going to deconflict main roads so refugees can make an exit through a safe passage. Other than internal decisions, armed forces may choose to keep close contact with humanitarian agencies on the ground that work with refugees, IDPs and other vulnerable populations to ensure that they adopt the best practice and minimize harm both to those already or potentially displaced.
However, these ‘protections’ afforded can be inadequate for several reasons. In International Humanitarian Law (IHL) terms, warring parties benefit exponentially from the principle of ‘Military Advantage’ which allows them to pursue certain actions that can harm non-combatants if the benefits anticipated are significant to the proportion of those potentially harmed. Policy makers have chosen not to provide a rigid definition of what constitutes ‘Military Advantage’, therefore, giving significant leeway to arm carriers to decide that. Of course, this has meant that often the impact of displacement is not carrying the weight it should in military assessments and most combatants choose to account only for potential fatalities as a measure for what constitutes a proportional strike.
Even without a comprehensive legal framework for assigning responsibilities to warring parties about refugees and IDPs, the nature of combat activities and the armed actors participating in them might mean that non-combatants will have to live under the continued threat of displacement. Both non-state armed groups (NSAGs) and states often have little incentive to adhere to protection norms or only superficially comply with the minimum IHL requirements without giving thorough consideration to the actual patterns of harm on the ground and the real weight their operations carry for compromising the safety of civilians.
Considering that conflict is affected by spatial dynamics, not all regions in a country are affected equally, leading to the depopulation of certain areas. Displacement can be often considered a tool used deliberately by those forces for depopulating whole provinces occupied by those considered an ‘enemy group’ and their political opponents or simply demoralising civilians, breaking down their ties and annihilating their will to resist and sometimes replacing them with another group. Depopulation can also be used by the victorious forces as a strategy for them to allocate reconstruction funds as they see fit and not as needed or avoid accountability due to the plain fact that those who witnessed their conduct during the war won’t be there to testify on what actually happened.
Although inevitably interlinked, displacement and conflict are often addressed as separate issues. On the one hand, it is important for them to be adapted to specific realities ensuring that standardization and institutionalization doesn't contribute to putting refugees in harm’s way. Those trapped in populated areas that have seen conflict might naturally be compelled to leave them and a policy to minimise war-related displacement should never be used as a pretext from other states to deny refuge to asylum seekers or repatriate them to unstable environments.
However, given that displacement is often a policy choice, ensuring that some accountability measures are imposed on warring parties can lead to them improving their practice by not putting the issue of displacement on the backburner. Therefore, we need to think more about displacement and conflict as processes that share the same trajectory, especially relating to issues of demographic change, reconstruction and justice post-conflict. But also as relating to creating safe havens and passages whilst the war is ongoing or simply by refraining from actions that result in destroying peoples’ homes and making their habitats unlivable.
Further readings on legal protections afforded to refugees and IDPs trapped in conflict can be found on the ICRC and UNHCR websites.
*Photo Credit: 'A Rwandan soldier guarding a refugee camp near Bangui, Central African Republic' by SSgt Ryan Crane via Wikimedia