New Working Paper: “Revisiting the Guidance on Planned Relocations: A Decade of Progress and Future Horizons”

Professor Ferris co-authored “Revisiting the Guidance on Planned Relocations: A Decade of Progress and Future Horizons” with Erica Bower and Sanjula Weerasinghe. The article was published on Researching Internal Displacement.

This article looks back at the development and continued relevance of the 2015 Guidance on Protecting People from Disasters and Environmental Change through Planned Relocations, which established an essential set of principles intended to clarify and uphold the rights of people undertaking or considering planned relocations. The article traces how the Guidelines and subsequent Toolkit have helped broaden the conversation to include not only the rights of relocating persons but also those of host communities, those who remain behind in sites of origin, and all those whose lives are affected by planned relocation. It further discusses how the core principles have remained relevant, even as the Guidelines have been adopted across diverse regional, national and community-level contexts. Finally, the author team, which includes the expert who led the development of the Guidance and Toolkit, suggests a brief research agenda, including areas where further direction is needed regarding issues that have become more salient since the 2015 Guidance was published.

Read the paper here.