Press Releases

Palestinian Refugees and IDPs: Always talked about but never included

BADIL Resource Center
12 December 2003
For Immediate Release


For more than 80 years, Palestinians have been talked about, argued over and had decisions made for them but rarely have they actually participated in any peace process.  At the Paris Peace Conference after World War I, delegates went so far as to say they wouldn’t even go through the form of consulting Palestinians about their future.  It has been so ever since.

Peace agreements that work include a major element of public involvement in their development, often the best guarantee for the effective implementation of an agreement.  In the final part of an analysis of recent peace agreements, BADIL looks at community participation in the development of agreements in Africa, Latin America and Northern Ireland and the lack of such involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli process.

The previous two parts of this analysis focused on human rights and refugee rights provisions in agreements.  These important elements are also missing in initiatives on the Palestinian issue.  All three parts—human rights, refugee rights and public participation—can be seen on BADIL’s web site www.badil.org.

Agreements examined for this report all include articles on human rights, refugee rights and community participation.  In most, the right of refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes and repossess their properties is seen as an important element in conflict resolution.  Others provide for the establishment of international, national and/or local bodies to facilitate return, property repossession, compensation for losses and post-return monitoring to ensure effective reintegration of refugees into their original communities.

The analysis is part of BADIL's effort to focus attention on best practice, past experience, rule of law and community participation in the reaching and implementing peace plans.


For further information contact: BADIL, P.O. Box 728, Bethlehem
Tel/Fax: 970-2-274-7346 or [email protected]   Web site: www.badil.org