Laws to protect rights of IDPs coming, says Dogara

A legislation aimed at ensuring that the rights of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are protected would soon be introduced, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has stated.

Speaking yesterday while receiving a delegation from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) in his office he assured that the House of Representatives has put in place legislative structures to achieve the objective.

Dogara remarked that efforts are on by the relevant committees of the House to conclude all work on the domestication and ratification of the UN Kampala treaty on the rights of refugees required to ensure effectiveness of the proposed legislation.

Dogara explained that: “‎The bill for the proposed North East Commission and the Kampala Commission are before the commission and sooner or later, the report will be brought before the House in plenary for consideration and hopefully we willl pass it and soon it will be ratified.”

He also informed the delegation that the House, in recognition of the plight of IDPs and the need for their rehabilitation and resettlement, and to find lasting solution to the problem, set up a committee which is in charge of IDP related issues, as well as passed a bill to set up the North East Development Commission.

Dogara added that it is not acceptable that the over two million displaced persons are asked to return to their communities while the causative factors have not been sorted out and security provided in the affected areas.

“There is no way we can do that unless we bring the conflict to an end and it makes no sense, absolutely no sense, for anybody to insist that people displaced should go back to their communities, knowing that chances are there that they may be attacked and then the conditions that gave rise to the crisis are not totally eliminated,” he stated.

Earlier, leader of the UNHCR delegation, Assistant High‎ Commissioner in charge of protection of rights of refugees and IDPs, Mr. Volke Turk, urged the Speaker to expedite action on the domestication and ratification of the UN convention on the protection of the rights of refugees in the House of Representatives.

He said the ratification of the treaty will be a valuable contribution to the protection of the rights of refugees.