PA-X data has been cited in a UN Special Rapporteur’s report on the human rights of internally displaced persons, highlighting how peace processes address displacement.
The collaboration between PeaceRep researchers and the UN helped generate insights on how peace agreements include (or neglect) displaced persons, shaping recommendations for more inclusive peacemaking.
Explore the PA-X Peace Agreements Database, the most expansive collection of peace agreements data in the world.
PA-X Data on Peace Processes and Internal Displacement Cited by UN Report
PA-X data has been cited in a high-level United Nations report on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (A/79/334), Paula Gaviria Betancur, examines the intersection of peace processes and internal displacement. First delivered by the UN Secretary-General to the UN General Assembly in September 2024, the report has continued relevance for a global conflict landscape in which an estimated 76 million people were internally displaced at the time of writing, more than half of those forcibly, predominately due to conflict and violence. In the report, the Special Rapporteur analyses how peace processes and internal displacement intersect, and offers a set of recommendations on how to make peacemaking more inclusive of internally displaced persons and their perspectives and human rights.
Peace Agreements and Internally Displaced Persons
The Special Rapporteur’s report cites PA-X data to illustrate the number of references to internal displacement found in global peace agreements:
“Among the 2,055 peace agreements in the Peace Agreements Database, 156 contain provisions that specifically and clearly address internal displacement. However, only eight agreements are focused specifically on the participation of internally displaced persons” (page 8, paragraph 25).
PeaceRep researchers Niamh Henry, Robert Wilson and Tim Epple worked with the Special Rapporteur’s team to provide analysis on IDPs in peace agreements, drawing on data from the PA-X Peace Agreements Database. By disaggregating PA-X data into mentions of displaced people and substantive provisions, the team generated insights into temporal trends across international and national peace processes. The authors found that partial or comprehensive agreements tend to hold provisions on displaced people more often than ceasefires or implementation agreements, with the majority of international and national examples being signed in Africa. The findings will be made public in a forthcoming PeaceRep data report on IDPs.
One of the authors, PeaceRep Research Fellow and Policy Coordinator, Robert Wilson, outlined the collaboration with the UN Special Rapporteur. “At a time when conflicts around the world with pre-existing internal displacement dynamics are escalating, and climate-induced disasters also multiplying, there is a clear need to focus more thinking and support into the issue of internal displacement. Our team drew on existing peace agreement data from processes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Sudan and South Sudan to support the UN Special Rapporteur team with an improved understanding of the provisions available in peace agreements that relate to internal displacement. We informed the Special Rapporteur’s conclusions and recommendations in their report to the UN General Assembly, in which they called for more attention to internal displacement in peace processes”.
Tim Epple, PeaceRep Managing Director, welcomed the Special Rapporteur’s reference to PA-X data:
We very much appreciate the opportunity to engage with the Special Rapporteur’s team. I am delighted our data contributed to evidence-based analysis and recommendations on such an important issue. We hope future peacemaking practice will become more sensitive to the needs, interests, and perspectives of IDPs.
The research on IDPs follows previous PeaceRep research on humanitarian ceasefires and corridors.
About PA-X
PeaceRep maintains the PA-X Peace Agreements Database, which is currently the most expansive collection of peace agreements data in the world. PA-X contains over 2,000 peace agreements found in more than 170 peace processes between 1990 and 2024, with sub-datasets on local agreements, gender, and amnesties.
PA-X data underpins a range of digital tools and datasets to support policy and practice, including PA-X Gender, PA-X Local, and the PA-X Tracker.
PA-X has been designed to provide easy access to peace agreement texts and to allow users to explore patterns of agreements over time, both within processes and across processes.
PA-X data is regularly cited in UN reports, including the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on Women, Peace and Security (WPS).
Further Reading:
Explore all mentions of refugees and internally displaced persons on PA-X