The African Union Convention for the Assistance and Protection of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), also known as the Kampala Convention — named after the Ugandan capital in which the text was adopted and opened for signature — is a 2009 international agreement negotiated and championed by the 54 countries that make up the African Union. It officially entered into force on 6 December 2012 following its fifteenth ratification, by the small kingdom of Swaziland. To date, 20 countries have ratified it, though to these must be added 22 countries that have signed the document but have yet to ratify it.

The first legally binding continental instrument

The Kampala Convention is the first legally binding continental instrument obliging governments to protect and assist people who have been forced to abandon their homes without crossing a national border. These people are defined as "internally displaced persons" to distinguish them from the classic definition of "refugee" which, in the words of the 1951 Geneva Convention, describes a person who "is outside the country of his nationality".

At the end of 2012, when the Convention began to produce its effects, one third of the world's 28.8 million displaced people were located in a sub-Saharan African country, according to data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (Idmc), the institute responsible for analysing the causes and effects of internal displacement, which operates under the Norwegian Refugee Council (Nrc). Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia were among the five countries in the world with the highest number of internally displaced persons.

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Refugees displaced by environmental causes

What makes this treaty distinctive is that, in addition to protecting people fleeing conflict and violence, human rights and political violations, it also protects those — predominantly women and children — who are forced to abandon their homes due to environmental disasters, natural calamities or the occurrence of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods. It is estimated that in 2012 there were 7.7 million people displaced by environmental causes in the countries that have ratified or signed the Kampala Convention. Of the 42 governments, 38 have activated or are developing climate change adaptation plans.

What the African Union has set in motion is the first step along a path towards inclusion, at the international level too, of people forced to migrate due to the adverse effects of global warming in the list of those deserving of rights and protection.