SPOTLIGHT ARCHIVE

Building on work undertaken at UNICEF, the article examines how children in situations of climate-related displacement, planned relocation, migration and immobility experience interconnected economic and non-economic harms. Losses and damages experienced through such (im)mobilities often cascade over time, adversely impacting children's physical and psychosocial wellbeing and access to child-critical systems and services, affecting children’s developmental paths throughout life. Failing to respond adequately risks entrenching cycles of poverty, vulnerability, inequality and loss of human capital across generations. The authors discuss why advancing child-responsive data systems, policy frameworks and participation mechanisms is crucial for decisions related to movement, relocation and adaptation interventions, where children’s views are often overlooked. Strengthening children’s inclusion is vital for better interventions and governance and for advancing intergenerational justice.

This article examines the right to return for internally displaced persons within the context of post-war resettlement, focusing on Sri Lankan IDPs and the military-bureaucratic apparatus they must navigate to return home. It demonstrates how military interests and the political significance of contested territories continue to override humanitarian considerations in the Northern and Eastern provinces, producing ‘ethnocratic regimes’, or governance systems that privilege territorial control whilst marginalising ethnic minorities through spatial regulation. The author argues that land distribution continues to function as a tool of state-making and power consolidation, even as it appears to remedy decades of displacement. Ultimately, bureaucratic controls, militarised surveillance, and procedural barriers in accessing land serve to reinforce ethno-territorial politics, reframing religious and ethnic minority IDPs not as bearers of rights but as populations requiring management and control.

This short article spotlights what the authors introduce as “the feminization of recovery” of internally displaced communities in Lebanon's southern border with Israel, where women’s unpaid and unrecognized efforts sustain reconstruction in the absence of formal systems following the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah one year ago.

The October 2023 conflict along Lebanon’s southern border displaced thousands, with female-headed households (FHHs) among the most affected. Returning after the ‘ceasefire,’ many women faced destroyed homes, scarce livelihoods, and gender norms privileging male breadwinners, all compounded by Lebanon’s refusal to recognize internally displaced persons (IDPs). Without legal acknowledegment or state support, women relied on informal networks, care work, and community solidarity to rebuild. Drawing on qualitative research (2023-2025), this commentary examines how FHHs transform survival into agency, turning daily labor and mutual support into the backbone of recovery. Recognizing their roles demands a policy shift from short-term aid to gender-sensitive livelihoods, housing repair, psychosocial support, and municipal funding that affirms women not as victims of war, but as architects of post-conflict renewal.

As climate impacts intensify, planned relocation is increasingly deployed as an adaptation strategy, yet outcomes for relocated communities remain consistently adverse. This paper argues that these failures stem from the treatment of planned relocation as a short-term, projectised disaster response rather than as a long-term developmental intervention. Drawing on social protection theory, this paper reconceptualises planned relocation as a form of social assistance, capable of delivering durable solutions. It demonstrates that planned relocation inherently performs preventive, protective, promotive, and potentially transformative social protection functions by minimising future climate risks, providing non-contributory transfers such as land and housing, and enabling livelihood reconstruction. However, when implemented outside formal social protection systems, these functions may collapse, often resulting in impoverishment and protracted displacement.

This brief article highlights the protracted and often overshadowed forced displacement of Serbs from Kosovo, triggered by the conflict in 1999 and the subsequent NATO intervention. More than two decades later, Serbian IDPs continue to face numerous challenges, from complex administrative procedures of obtaining and renewing their residency status to being stigmatised within local communities. The situation of IDPs remains one of the key Serbian arguments in rejection of the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo in 2008. The authors explore not only everyday issues faced by Serbian IDPs but also their perspectives on ending the displacement, situated within the broader political contradictions between Belgrade and Pristina.

Foregrounding the voices of people living in three different communities of displacement in Bangladesh, this field research and advocacy report examines the nexus of climate change, loss and damage and displacement. This comprehensive report highlights promising interventions by Bangladeshi civil society organisations that have helped internally displaced people (IDPs) living in protracted displacement move toward durable solutions. It also examines positive developments on the policy front, including Bangladesh's fledgling National Strategy on Internal Displacement Management (NSIDM). At the same time, it calls attention to how Bangladesh's protracted displacement crisis remains under acknowledged and therefore under addressed in national policy and programming.

The drastic funding cuts undertaken by the major donors in 2025 have forced the humanitarian sector into ‘hyper prioritisation’, resulting into its retreat from all activities deemed as non-essential to ensuring immediate survival. This first volume in our series on ‘Internal Displacement in a Changing World Order’ considers the far-reaching consequences that such ‘hyper prioritisation’ carries for the lives of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in humanitarian crises. The analysis shows that, besides already costing lives, hyper prioritisation risks pushing more people into starvation, disease, missed educational opportunities, and shattered livelihoods, thus eroding IDPs’ prospects to embark on the path towards self-reliance and solutions. It concludes by suggesting the need for humanitarian action to be guided, not by the dehumanising exercise of hyper prioritisation, but by the existing clear evidence showing the powerful potential of community-led responses.

This insightful short article from Nepal highlights a promising case study of voluntary 'migration as adaptation' to socio-environmental changes that has allowed rural villages to maintain their vitality in the face of slow-onset climatic hazards, staving off the displacement of entire village populations. Despite the loss of human resources in the villages, voluntary out-migration has helped reshape and revitalise previously faltering rural livelihoods, helping villages remain culturally vibrant and economically viable communities for older people and others who are unwilling or unable to migrate. Notably, in turn, the cultural vibrance of some rural villages compels many migrants to maintain strong ties to their home villages, creating translocal bonds that help support resilience in the face of environmental change.