Introduction

Abstract

Since its founding in 1951, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has changed almost beyond recognition. Created with a narrow, time-bound mandate to support emigration from the ruins of post-war Europe, the agency was purposefully established outside the United Nations (UN) with a small membership comprising 16 states. Seven decades later, IOM is now among the largest international organizations (IOs) worldwide, with 175 member states, a budget of more than two billion dollars annually, and over 15,000 staff. 1 IOM became a related organization in the UN system in 2016 by virtue of the 2016 Agreement Concerning the Relationship between the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration ('the 2016 Agreement'). 2 It now undertakes a striking range of activities, broadly related to human mobility, from humanitarian relief, emergency evacuations, resettlement, returns, and border management to countertrafficking, data collection, and policy development. IOM can currently be seen surveying and distributing aid to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine, receiving Haitians deported from the United States, renovating and facilitating returns from abysmal detention centres in Libya, coordinating the UN Network on Migration, and supporting the 1 1 IOM, 'IOM Snapshot: Dignified, Orderly and Safe Migration for the Benefit of All' (2021) <www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl486/files/about-iom/iom_snapshot_a4_en.pdf> accessed 14 July 2022. 2 UNGA Res A/70/296, 'Agreement Concerning the Relationship between the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration' (25 July 2016) UN Doc A/RES/70/296 (hereafter 2016 Agreement).

IOM’s Engagement with the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement

“…First, the camp-based focus gave the impression that to be an IDP, one must live in a camp. 135 Viewed from the perspective of the GPs, this is simply not true. The GPs' description of IDPs sets out just one geographic limitation on who can be an IDP -they must not have crossed an international border.…”