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Rejoinder
University of Michigan Law School, 625 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA jch@umich.edu
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It is unsurprising that Roberta Cohen staunchly defends the ‘internally displaced person’ construct, and that she consequently approves of the merger of refugee studies into the broader forced migration studies rubric. Cohen played a major part in the evolution of the IDP protection paradigm, and has worked passionately to advance that project.
What is most interesting about Cohen's response is her insistence that international law and institutions should accord a preferred position to internally displaced persons relative to other internal human rights victims. But just what is it that Cohen believes justifies the conceptual disaggregation of IDPs from other (non-displaced) internal victims? In particular, what warrants the allocation of enhanced international institutional resources to meet the needs of IDPs in priority to those of victims generally? As Cohen forthrightly concedes, despite the different forms of vulnerability experienced by IDPs (she cites in particular exposure to camp life, risk of return,