In international law, there are two subsets of persons, broadly speaking, who concern the international community. We refer to these people as “people of concern”. There are refugees, and there are internally displaced persons.
The main difference between them has to do with one simple factor: In one group, internally displaced persons, people do not cross an internationally recognized border during the course of their movement. The reasons for movement are similar. As we've heard from testimonies today, there are far more IDPs—internally displaced persons—than there are refugees in the world.
There is an attempt by the international community of states to bridge the gap between these two regimes. That's why we have reference to the New York declaration that was done some years ago. We try to bring to bear the same regulatory framework that exists for refugees under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in principle, at least, to IDPs. We're not there yet. Under international law, the rules governing how IDPs are treated, what their rights are and what states are obliged to do vis-à-vis IDPs are not one-for-one matches with what refugee law requires.
There is what we call a body of soft law. Here I refer to a series of principles done by Francis Deng. We call them the Deng principles concerning IDPs. There is also the New York declaration, which was done some years ago after the Deng principles. When we read this soft body of law together—and when I say soft, I'm referring to non-binding principles that states would adhere to as a matter of comity, interest, morality and so on—we see the progressive development of a body of rules and norms applying to refugees under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees that is similar for IDPs. They are almost a one-to-one match, though not completely.
My point is that Canada and all states have every interest in ensuring that the body of law that exists as soft law governing IDP treatment under international practice be codified in a treaty of its own, or at least that there be some attempt to make binding these norms as they relate to IDPs.
As a final point, that is not to say that states that are engaged with or faced with an IDP problem do not have binding legal obligations vis-à-vis these people. They do. They're very robust. We see this not only in refugee law principles but in human rights law, such as the 1966 covenants on economic, social and cultural rights; on civil and political rights; and so on. Then we see customary principles of international law that apply to refugees but also to IDPs, most particularly the duty of non-refoulement, that is, not sending somebody back to a place where they have a well-founded fear of persecution.
That's the long and the short of it. I could give a whole lecture on it, but I will spare you.