Rethinking the Place of International Humanitarian Law in the Protection of Displaced Children during Humanitarian Crisis

Humanitarian Crisis in its own nature and nomenclature has produced devastating effects and most of those affected vulnerable persons in which children as a minority group are comprehensibly and unsurprisingly strongly affected by the effects of armed conflict. This negative experience by children becomes precarious for these children in situations as most of them are separated from their families. As a maiden remark, it should be acknowledged that while the effects of armed conflict are not always noticeable and quantifiable in children, they remain present and multi-dimensional to such an extent that it would be extremely ambitious for any legal or normative framework to pretend to tackle them holistically. For those separated from their families, the risk of abuse and exploitation mathematically increases. In that sense, the quality of the experiences does not differ fundamentally between Displaced Children or refugee children in that they are both deprived of their primary role model, their parents. In legal terms, however, displaced children do not benefit from the same level of protection that the status of refugee affords. The otherwise clear-cut legal distinction of human rights law and humanitarian law between Internally Displaced Persons and refugees appears, nevertheless, increasingly complicated to distinguish in its practice as both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ conflicts result often in refugee flows into the neighboring countries.