The African Union's Refugee/IDP Institutional Structure

While visiting the African Union web site, I noticed that the AU’s Coordinating Committee on Assistance and Protection to Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (CCAR) is meeting today. A link to the draft agenda is provided on the home page. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find very much information on the AU web site about the work of this committee, but there are documents reflecting the work of other AU mechanisms that address refugee/IDP matters more generally. For example:

1. A description of the Humanitarian Affairs, Refugees and Displaced Persons Division, which is part of the Department of Political Affairs. A brief list of the Division's functions is also provided.

2. Conclusions and Recommendations of the Consultative Meeting between the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (March 2003) (Note: This includes a recommendation for work that the aforementioned CCAR should take on.)

3. A short article from the AU’s newsletter that describes how the AU collaborates with UNHCR.

4. The web site for the recently convened Ministerial Conference on Refugees, Returnees and IDPs. (Note: UNHCR’s Africa Newsletter, p. 3, includes a brief report of the results of the meeting.)

In addition, decisions of the AU Assembly and Council of Ministers that relate to displacement issues are available. Visitors can browse by session or search the site for relevant terms. (Note: The AU site engine is not currently functioning but a site search can still be conducted using a web search engine like Google; for example, enter >refugees site: www.africa-union.org< into the search box to locate references specific to the AU site.)

Other resources elsewhere elaborate on AU refugee/IDP mechanisms, including the following:

1. An article from Conflict Trends that provides a very helpful overview of the African Union’s evolving “institutional framework for responding to forced displacement in Africa.” And it includes a description of the CCAR mentioned above.

2. A book entitled Human Rights in Africa: From the OAU to the African Union. It includes a chapter on “refugees and human rights.”

3. The book's author, Rachel Murray, also has an article in RSQ called “Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons and Human Rights: The African System.”

Posted in Publications and Web Sites/Tools.