documentation since many never had identification documents or a legal residence and so cannot apply for an IDP card, register new births, apply for citizenship, access social benefits and obtain employment or education.
In the Balkans, Roma suffer from widespread discrimination in various sectors of public life. Their treatment and living conditions deteriorated with displacement but there has been some progress recently in better representing and defending the interests of the Roma and improving their living conditions. Other IDPs who are ethnic minorities in their area of displacement face discrimination. It is difficult for ethnic Chechens in Russia and Kurds in Turkey, for example, to lead a normal life in displacement. People who fled areas where they were an ethnic minority and who went to areas where they were part of the ethnic majority face more subtle discrimination as they are often viewed as non-locals even years after their arrival. This treatment of IDPs highlights the outstanding need for further efforts to combat discrimination and promote reconciliation in the region.
The disruption of education for internally displaced children remains an issue mostly in the Caucasus and Turkey. Displaced children are legally entitled to attend school but some children are being educated in schools damaged by conflict that have yet to be repaired while others do not go at all since many IDPs, being poorer than their neighbours, cannot afford associated costs such as transport, textbooks and school supplies for their children. Displaced children in some countries are being educated separately from their non-displaced peers. While in some cases this is for practical reasons, in other cases – in Azerbaijan and Georgia, for example – segregation has been a deliberate policy.
While some IDPs have been vulnerable since the beginning of their displacement, the vulnerability of others has increased over time as a result of family separation, lack of support to address their specific needs, and social stigmatisation; they include people who are traumatised, disabled or chronically ill, female heads of household, children and the elderly. The lack of comprehensive psychosocial and other support programmes for traumatised and disabled IDPs sustains their marginalisation. The truly disadvantaged are those who have also lost the financial, physical and moral support of extended family, friends and other networks. They risk desperate poverty as well as exploitation and abuse. Feelings of insecurity and isolation due to war and uncertainty about the future stand in the way of self-reliance. Their situation is aggravated by high rates of unemployment in most areas of displacement in the region as the local economies continue to recover from conflict. Many displaced families therefore survive on government benefits and food assistance. The resulting challenges to the sustainability of return promote further internal migration of returnees.
Support for local integration and resettlement
While many governments have demonstrated political will and have allocated resources for return, the same has not always been true for local integration. Where states are trying to push IDPs to return, they appear to restrict opportunities for self-reliance, which in turn hampers local integration and reinforces the situation of IDPs as marginalised, dependent on aid and feeling out of place. The exception is Cyprus, where the government of the Republic has facilitated local integration of IDPs since the beginning, while simultaneously advocating that they be able to return to their homes. Other governments have changed their approach over time. Georgia, for example, has acknowledged the right of IDPs to local integration in its National IDP Strategy and Turkey did the same in a national strategy framework document in 2005. This marked a significant promise of departure from the previous government approach.
Given the political obstacles to return, the profile of those still displaced and the emergence of a second generation that has often never visited 