ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how far refugee law and the law relating to internally displaced persons (IDPs) provide international protection and how much of that protection stems from treaty law. To what extent does implementation in practice come down to field developments that have given rise to legal obligations for states and non-state actors? Before starting to examine the two regimes, refugee law and the law relating to IDPs, in order to discern their various strengths so as to be in a position to address any perceived protection gaps, the nature of those regimes needs to be reviewed. To talk about refugee law and the law relating to internally displaced persons as if they were identical ignores their different roots and, to some extent, their subsequent development. Refugee law is traditionally thought of as the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 and its 1967 Protocol,1 while IDP ‘law’ would be founded on the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, 1998, although there is now the 2009 African Convention on IDPs, too.2
