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| Sunday, 30 October 2005 |
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Call for IDP protection by Thava Sajitharan 'Today we have at least 25 million civilians uprooted and displaced by conflict and violence worldwide' disclosed the International Displacement Division Head Dennis McNamara of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. He made this observation delivering the keynote address at the inauguration of the two-day workshop on 'National Human Rights Institutions and Internally Displaced Persons' organised by the Human Rights Commission (HRC) of Sri Lanka, the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions and the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement in Colombo last week. McNamara, who at the beginning of his speech asked the participants to accept that he was speaking in his personal capacity and not necessarily on behalf of the organisation he represented further remarked that 'the issue of displaced population from both conflict and abuse, deprivation and natural disasters is one of the major and least addressed of all global humanitarian problems'. 'Disparity in treatment of different groups of displaced and refugees is alarming, he stated, stressing that 'there must be equity in the response to all those displaced'. He described some of the Asian governments as being "recalcitrant" for 'vigorously resisting international intervention in the area, despite well-documented and inadequately addressed displacement protection problems'. He expressed the view that Human Rights bodies and NGOs that were making up the front line of human rights protection in Asia operated often with unsympathetic or even hostile local governments. HRC Sri Lanka Commissioner N. Selvakumaran in his address said that internally displaced persons are entitled to constitutionally guaranteed freedom as every other citizen enjoys and they should not be subjected to discrimination. |
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