Abstract

Despite high-level proclamations of an IDP ‘right to return’, any such legal right in international law remains distinctly lacking. The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, although designed to address the failings of existing law to protect the human rights of the internally displaced, fails itself as a “soft law” instrument to provide IDPs with a comprehensive, explicit right to voluntary return to their homes or places of habitual residence. Not only does this lack of an effective legal right to return reveal the continuing deficiencies of international law to secure, inter alia, IDPs’ fundamental right to freedom of movement and establishment, it also raises questions about the success of leading frameworks in filling protection gaps left by hard law at the international level.
 
This paper seeks to explore how an explicit, comprehensive, legal right to return that is applicable to the internal displacement context can be realised. By critically engaging with current protection frameworks, this research will reveal a series of challenges that not only question present approaches to securing IDP return but also question our very understanding of the internal displacement phenomenon itself.