Framework for Protecting Internally Displaced Persons in Nigeria

When Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) were first counted in 1982, 1.2 million were found in eleven countries. By 1995, the number had soared to more than 20 million in at least 35 countries, and about 26 million at the end of 2008. In Africa, up to 12 million people were internally displaced while in Nigeria, internal displacement was already in the headlines over 30 years ago when some two million people died and several millions became internally displaced during the Biafran war. While the international community has a well established legal and institutional system of protection and assistance for refugees, none exists explicitly dealing with the issue of the internally displaced. This lacuna spurred the writer to seek to develop a minimum standard of inviolable human rights to protect IDPs in Nigeria drawing from the fundamental rights as guaranteed in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This work is ideal for academics, policy makers, diplomats, humanitarian volunteers, human rights activists, students of international humanitarian law, human rights law and political science.

Benedicta Daudu, Ph.D: Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Jos. Recipient of the Carnegie Corporation New York scholarship and a Fulbright visiting Researcher Scholar to the American University, Washington College of Law. Member of the National Association of Law Teachers, Federation of Female Lawyers and the Nigerian Bar Association.