THE FRAMEWORK ON DURABLE SOLUTIONS FOR INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS IN THE SCHOLARLY LITERATURE: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS

The number of persons forcibly displaced from their homes, the long duration of their plight, and the manifold negative consequences of internal displacement have intensified the United Nations efforts to come to grips with, what is now called, “the global internal displacement crisis”. At the heart of the new United Nations strategies is a quest for solutions to internal displacement, with the Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons serving as their blueprint. Endorsed in 2009 by the major international stakeholders in the field, the Framework provided the conceptual foundations for the policies and programmes for internally displaced persons which would go beyond the provision of humanitarian assistance. To understand whether the Framework has had an important role in the development of the scholarship on forced displacement as it has had in practice, the study examines the references to the Framework in scholarly discussions evolving since its endorsement. To this aim, the authors undertake qualitative and quantitative analysis of a sample of scholarly articles in the field of social sciences. The study’s findings confirm that the Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons represents a standard reference for the concept of durable solutions in academic research on internal displacement. However, the study also shows that a more critical engagement with the text of the Framework is missing.