ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how international norms developed between 1971 and 1998. While an assistance role for United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was a point of contentious negotiations during its creation it demonstrated to the international community that it could be both an effective and a neutral provider of humanitarian assistance. Beyond the work of UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross , the problem of internal displacement was not really recognized in the early 1980s; by contrast, at the end of that decade, widespread reforms of the UN system were underway. The Working Group concluded that the protection public international law afforded to internally displaced persons (IDP) was inadequate. As with the Working Group, Jacques Cuenod’s report noted that assistance to IDPs “raises delicate issues for the UN system” with respect to sovereignty, with the possibility that offers of assistance “may be interpreted as an interference in the internal affairs of the State.”
