A/HRC/40/26 11. Protection considerations should be integrated and mainstreamed into every service or form of assistance delivered by the international community. They should inform its shelter, WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), health and education programmes. For instance, failing to think through the layout of camps could put women and girls at risk of rape, abduction and other serious violations of their rights. Protection should also be the objective of laws and policies related to internal displacement. The Guiding Principles rightly ascribed the primary responsibility for protection to States. Developing a national instrument on internal displacement, whether a law or a policy, was a tangible act of national responsibility. In that respect, States were encouraged to consult the internally displaced and their host communities in the development of national laws and policies on internal displacement. Such consultations had been held in Nigeria in 2016, for example, and were also being held in the Niger. 12. Although laws and policies on internal displacement were to be valued and promoted, one of the greatest present challenges was to implement them once they had been adopted. Proper and specifically mandated institutional structures were needed, and they should have the necessary political authority and human and financial resources to carry out prevention and protection activities and develop solutions for internal displacement. Successful implementation also required that States be accountable to their citizens, including the displaced. Strong domestic institutions, such as the judicial systems in Colombia and Georgia, were an essential component to ensuring accountability. 13. In looking towards the future and building on the twentieth anniversary of the Guiding Principles, the international community must remain steadfast in its pursuit of preventive action and solutions to forced displacement. The Guiding Principles were the expression of a vision that would make it possible to achieve that end, especially if they were reflected in normative and institutional frameworks that translated into action the principle that the primary responsibility lay with States themselves. III. Panellists 14. In her introductory remarks as moderator of the panel discussion, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons noted that the twentieth anniversary of the development of the Guiding Principles had been an opportunity not only to take stock of achievements but also to acknowledge the growing challenges. It was likewise an opportunity to step up efforts to prevent, address and support solutions to internal displacement and galvanize others into doing the same. Forty million people were internally displaced by conflict and violence as of the end of 2017. A further 18.8 million new internal displacements due to disasters had been recorded in the same year. In addition, an estimated 15 million people a year were displaced by development projects, a cause of displacement recognized in the Guiding Principles. Millions of other displacements were not systematically recorded, including those caused by land grabs, criminal violence and slow-onset disasters, such as drought. Without more attention to prevention, protection and solutions for internally displaced persons, people would continue to be displaced and to remain displaced. 15. The Special Rapporteur stressed the continued relevance of the Guiding Principles, their emphasis on sovereignty as responsibility and on the importance of the participation of internally displaced persons in decisions that affected them and their applicability in all displacement situations, covering all aspects of an adequate response, from prevention to durable solutions. Although the Guiding Principles were the basis of several national laws and policies on internal displacement worldwide, all too often, laws and policies had not been fully implemented, and the ministries responsible for matters concerning internal displacement lacked the means to make addressing internal displacement a government priority. 16. The Special Rapporteur stressed that both the scale and the duration of internal displacement had highlighted the limits of humanitarian responses to internal displacement, contributing to renewed scrutiny of the effectiveness of the United Nations system within the context of the World Humanitarian Summit and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable 4