A/HRC/41/40 voices of IDPs themselves through a panel of IDPs from Japan, Mexico, Nigeria and South Sudan. The event was co-hosted by the Permanent Missions of Austria, Honduras and Uganda to the United Nations Office at Geneva, with the support of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), UNHCR, Christian Aid and Greenpeace. 8. The Special Rapporteur contributed to ongoing discourse on humanitarian developments, including a panel discussion organized by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) on “invisible displacement”, held in Berlin in October 2018, and an event on transitional justice and durable solutions for peace organized by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the International Organization for Migration in Berlin in February 2019. In October 2018, she was lead discussant in a series of events on women, transitional justice and displacement organized by the International Development Law Organization in The Hague. She also participated in a summit on forcible displacement and gender in South Asia organized by the Women’s Regional Network in Kuala Lumpur in February 2019; a workshop of the Advisory Committee of the Platform on Disaster Displacement, held in Switzerland in February 2019; and the sixteenth Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development Conference, dedicated to the theme “People on the move: causes, consequences and the way forward”, held in March 2019. 9. In August 2018, the Special Rapporteur joined a forum in the context of the GP20 convened by the Governor of the State of Chihuahua, Mexico. She conducted a field visit with state officials to meet IDPs and discussed ways to improve their protection. She spoke at a seminar on judicial access by IDPs. In February 2019, at the invitation of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Right, she attended an “international encounter with human rights defenders” and IDPs and the launch of the Commission’s report on IDPs. 10. On 6 March 2019, she convened an expert meeting in Geneva on improving protection of internally displaced children to inform her report to the General Assembly in 2019. Experts on child rights in humanitarian contexts discussed critical human rights and protection challenges and considered how to strengthen prevention and responses. Attendees included the Special Representatives of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict and on Violence against Children and the Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. 11. In June and December 2018, the Rapporteur co-organized and participated in two sessions of the course on internal displacement at the Institute for International Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy, supported by UNHCR and donors. She attaches great importance to the role of academic institutions in research, teaching and analysis on internal displacement. She provided presentations to various universities, including a special workshop convened by the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London, and seminars organized by Georgetown University, Windesheim Honours College, Fordham University, Humboldt University of Berlin and the European University. III. Enhancing the role of national human rights institutions in the protection of the human rights of internally displaced persons A. Introduction 12. As of December 2018, 41.4 million people remained uprooted within their own countries by conflict, and 28 million new internal displacements were recorded in 2018 alone (10.8 million due to conflict and 17.2 million due to disasters). 1 Many remain displaced for years or even decades, and the trends are unlikely to reverse soon given 1 4 See www.internal-displacement.org/.