A/HRC/44/41
Policy. The Special Rapporteur particularly congratulates El Salvador for the adoption of its
national law in January 2020.
5.
Regarding data on and analysis of internal displacement, the Special Rapporteur
continues to be a member of the Executive Committee of the Joint IDP Profiling Service. She
contributed to the development and promotion of the international recommendations on
internally displaced persons statistics, issued by the Expert Group on Refugee and IDP
Statistics, which were adopted in March 2020 by the United Nations Statistical Commission.
In January 2020, she also participated in the International Forum on Migration Statistics in
Cairo.
6.
The African Union declared 2019 as the Year of Refugees, Returnees and Internally
Displaced Persons and was therefore a particular focus for the Special Rapporteur. In Addis
Ababa, she participated in the African Union round table on root causes and durable solutions
in February and a conference of the Network of African National Human Rights Institutions
on durable solutions in September. In October, the mandate also participated in a panel on
internal displacement at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Banjul;
a conference on durable solutions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Kinshasa in
October; the African Union annual humanitarian symposium on forced displacement in
Nairobi in November; and the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the African Union
Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa
(Kampala Convention) in Kampala in December. The Special Rapporteur congratulates
Somalia and South Sudan as new States parties to the Kampala Convention.
7.
Throughout the reporting period, the Special Rapporteur conducted several working
visits to raise the visibility of internal displacement: to Tbilisi for activities related to GP20
in July, to Bangkok to meet regional organizations in July and to Brussels for meetings with
various European Union counterparts in December. She also conducted visits to assist
Governments, United Nations agencies and other stakeholders in their work on internally
displaced persons, namely a joint mission to Ethiopia with the Emergency Relief Coordinator
and the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support in September; a two-day
event in Nigeria in October promoting the ratification of the Kampala Convention, organized
by the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons and
Public Service International and its unions; and a four-day consultation mission in the
Philippines in February 2020 in Cotabato. The Special Rapporteur engaged in constructive
dialogues with Member States, mainly through State-organized stakeholder meetings and
bilateral meetings. An official mission was also conducted to Iraq in February 2020.
8.
To advocate for the rights of internally displaced children, the focus of her report to
the General Assembly in 2019 (A/74/261 and Corr.1), the Special Rapporteur took part in
the activities of Child Rights Connect related to the day of general discussion of the
Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva in June. She is also currently advising on
the Child Rights Connect toolkit for children human rights defenders. The Special Rapporteur
co-organized with Honduras a side event at the forty-first session of the Human Rights
Council in Geneva in June and a side event at the seventy-fourth session of the General
Assembly with Norway, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in New York in October.
She also contributed video messages to the conference on displaced children organized by
Refugees International, the Jesuit Refugee Service and the Catholic Relief Services in New
York in September and to the commemorative activities of the Committee on the Rights of
the Child in Geneva in November.
9.
Given the relationship between climate change and internal displacement, the focus
of her upcoming report to the General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur participated in a
humanitarian affairs segment side event of the Economic and Social Council, addressing
conflict and disaster displacement in Geneva in June and in the Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung
international conference on climate migrants in Manila in September. She remains a member
of the Advisory Committee of the Platform on Disaster Displacement.
10.
Academic institutions and capacity-building events are important in promoting the
protection of internally displaced persons. Over the past year, the Special Rapporteur has
engaged with the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights,
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