How does a protracted conflict affect displacement? Does a protracted conflict automatically lead to protracted displacement? To what extent is the displacement in these conflicts linked to violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) rather than other factors? How do those violations affect patterns of displacement? This article seeks to provide some answers to these questions, focusing on the example of Iraq from 2003 to the present day. As the ICRC report mentions, the displacement of civilians during a protracted war is a difficult issue that deserves our attention. They require responses that go beyond the usual ways of providing protection and assistance: they require a response in which the boundary between humanitarian aid and development is much more blurred, and in which different time frames coexist, for example by combining emergency aid with long-term programmes. Recently, however, “protracted conflict” has become a concept in its own right, and there is now an awareness that such conflicts change the nature of humanitarian aid. In fact, this kind of war is as old as humanity itself.
Long wars are not a new phenomenon – there are historical conflicts with evocative names such as the Thirty Years’ War and the Hundred Years’ War, and the twentieth century also saw many long-running conflicts. Protracted conflicts are a major source of human suffering and a cause of protracted displacement, migration and development reversals. The average length of time the ICRC has been present in the countries hosting its ten largest operations is more than 36 years. The ICRC spends about two-thirds of its budget on protracted conflicts.
In a report published in 2016, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated:
In recent years, humanitarian organizations have consistently emphasized the long duration of many armed conflicts and the ways in which that duration affects humanitarian aid. It discusses how Iraq has been struggling with acts of violence, hostilities and IHL violations that have generated displacement and human suffering. Based on the literature produced by humanitarian organizations and academia, this article aims at analyzing what triggers displacement in protracted conflict, highlighting the role of international humanitarian law (IHL) violations. The displacement of civilians during a protracted war is a difficult issue that deserves our attention, and Iraq is unfortunately an emblematic example of this phenomenon.
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