Gaps and Tensions in Attending Internally Displaced People by the Armed Conflict in Lima, Peru

• In Event: After Political Violence: Human Rights, Policies, Sequels and memories in Post-War Peru

Abstract

There are two institutional frameworks that protect Internally Displaced People (IDP) by the Peruvian armed conflict (1980-2000). The first operates under the logic of social programs and derives from the Law 28223, enacted in 2004 with the purpose establishing “measures for their protection and assistance during displacement, return, resettlement or relocation and during their integration”. The second one operates under the logic of repairing the violation of human rights and was born in the following year with the Law 28592, which created the Comprehensive Plan for Reparations in order to restore "the rights and conditions, resources, capabilities, opportunities and quality of life lost as a result of violence and its consequences".
From the analysis of two groups of IDP in the districts of Ate and Lurigancho-Chosica, this presentation argues two things. 1) The main strategy of the IDP for accessing to an adequate attention depends on the ability of a few leaders with extensive political career and strongman character, for lobbying with various state institutions and public servants, and not so much in making bonds with the human rights community; 2) these institutional frameworks attend IDPs as individuals with neccesities, but fail to addres the damage that the experience of displacement has caused in the social fabric, being one of its expressions the weakness of the collective action based on IDP identity.

Author

• Ivan A Ramirez