Internal displacement and local integration in Ukraine

Cathrine Brun writes:

On 19 and 20 October I was invited by the Council of Europe to talk at their National Forum organised in cooperation with the Ministry for Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine and with the support of the Embassy of Japan in Ukraine. The Forum was titled “Three Years of Displacement:
Challenges and Good Practices of IDP integration” and was part of a Council of Europe project on “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine”. Displacement is a relatively new situation in Ukraine and, at the moment, there are believed to be between 1.6 and 1.8 million internally displaced (IDPs), forced to move since the complex conflict started in March 2014. 

Cathrine Brun (right) in Kyiv

More than 100 delegates participated in the forum with representatives from the internally displaced, from civil society, local and national governments and international humanitarian organisations. The meeting was part of a process to draft a new state strategy for durable solutions for the IDPs. Durable solutions are problematic in many contexts and are often out of reach for displaced populations (see Brun and Fàbos 2017, CENDEP blog by Richard Carver). However, Ukraine stands out as a special case because, already after three years, there is emphasis on local integration rather than return as the preferred solution that has often been the norm. 

We cannot assume that all IDPs in Ukraine prefer integration over return. Additionally, there is still much to be done to secure people’s rights to keep connections to the places they fled from and their right to move on from where they first arrived as displaced. The new national strategy must make sure that these rights are being accessed. At the same time, the relatively early emphasis on integration enables a more long-term and better prospect for people at the places where they are displaced. 

When I was first invited to the Forum, I was asked to talk about integration of IDPs. However, in my work with local integration processes for IDPs, I have come to understand integration as what IDPs and their hosts do, I thus changed the title to talk about integration by IDPs.

In this context, we can understand integration as both an end-point and a process. As an end-point, integration can be said to be when the IDPs have become full members of the societies that they have moved to, but there are many discussions around when displacement ends. Often, these discussions are related to when displaced are no longer in need of assistance as a result of their displacement. Some of the legal measures that are currently being discussed in the Council of Europe project are crucial to put in place for integration to happen. IDPs must be ensured the same rights as their co-nationals, but at the moment this is not always happening. 

Integration can also be seen as a process, and can be defined as ‘collective change’: that is the changes that take place in a society where IDPs and hosts meet and interact (Kuhlman 1994). With integration as a process, we can focus on how the host communities are actively involved in integration processes and assistance can be helpful in assisting interaction that already exists between IDPs and hosts. Rather than a purely legal perspective or an emphasis on the IDP-category as a status, a focus on integration as collective change, enables a needs-based approach to assistance: where the most vulnerable groups among both hosts and IDPs get access to assistance. 

Finally, when dealing with local integration, I want to add a note of caution. After three years of displacement in Ukraine, the IDP category is already well established. From my brief encounter with the situation in the country, it seems to be a category that is taken for granted and used to separate the displaced from their hosts in essential ways, such as access to rights. If the situation of displacement becomes protracted, if the local integration process takes a long time, and if the government continues to treat the people who were displaced and who are placed in the IDP category as separate from the non-displaced, there is a danger that the IDP category moves from being a humanitarian category established to assist people in need of relief due to their displacement to a social category – an underclass or marginalised group that does not enjoy full membership in the society, which we have seen in other contexts (Brun et al. 2017). 

Local integration will continue to happen in places where IDPs and hosts co-exist, but without full membership, recognition and participation in the local communities where they live, displacement may not come to an end.

References

Brun, C. and A.H. Fàbos. 2017. Mobilising home for long term displacement: a reflection on the durable solutions. Journal of Human Rights Practice, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/hux021

Brun, C., A.H. Fàbos, O. El Abed. 2017. Abject citizenship: when categories of displacement collide with categories if citizenship. Norwegian Journal of Geography 71(4): 220–232

Carver, R. 2017. An end to refugee protection? CENDEP blog 09.10.17, http://cendep.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/an-end-to-refugee-protection.html

Kuhlman, T. 1994. Asylum or Aid? The Economic Integration of Ethiopian and Eritrean Refugees in the Sudan. Research Series 2/1994, African Studies Centre, Leiden.