ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how the issue of internally displaced persons (IDP) assistance and protection became an international, rather than solely domestic, problem through the lens of International Relations (IR) theory, and particularly an IR Constructivist approach. It argues that new international norms, shared understandings held by actors with a given identity, have been constructed around the IDP issue, and that these norms today make a nascent international regime. The book focuses on states where the implementation process has run into issues. It explores the fluidity of the refugee concept in the early twentieth century and argues that internal displacement was not yet a clearly distinct form of displacement during that period. The book examines how the IDP issue reemerged in the 1970s, driven by the need for international assistance to be provided to them.
