Reparations for Displacement since Chorzów: Moving from the ‘Problems of Displacement’ to the ‘Problems of the Displaced’ via International and Regional Human Rights Bodies

At the time the Permanent Court of International Justice was deliberating on the principles of reparation in the Chorzów case, mass displacement of people from their homes was not yet broadly recognized as wrongful in international law. The few displacement situations proscribed internationally were seen as affronts to state sovereignty or stability. The interests of displaced individuals and communities were not the main object of international legal protection, and reparation claims would have been an interstate matter. Since then, two major evolutions in international law on displacement have reflected and epitomized the broad shift in the international law of reparation from addressing state interests to addressing impacts on individuals and communities. These are: (1) recognition of a broader range of internationally unlawful forms of displacement; and (2) elaboration of various forms of reparation addressing the harms of displacement for individuals and communities. This chapter charts and analyses these two evolutions and demonstrates the important role of international and regional human rights bodies’ decisions in response to the claims of displaced people. Given the particular tensions among the interests of states, individuals, and communities in resolving mass displacement, developments on this issue offer salient illustrations of the movement away from state-centricity in the international law of reparations. The role played by human rights bodies also offers a significant example of how actors beyond the state have contributed to this shift.