‘Duty-bearers’ in the governance of durable solutions for internally displaced persons in Ethiopia: an actor-oriented approach

The notion of duty-bearers in forced displacement research is often confined to states. Yet, the responsibilities of humanitarian organizations in the governance of durable solutions for internally displaced persons remain scant in academic scholarship. This study goes beyond a formal and legalistic understanding of duty-bearers’ responsibilities and explores affected communities’ perspectives in the displacement context in the Tigray region, Ethiopia. Based on ethnographic interviews and focus group discussions conducted in Tigray and Addis Ababa in 2024 and 2025 and grounded in an actor-oriented approach, the study argues for moving from the top-down imposition of norms to value the affected community’s agency in shaping duty-bearer norms from below. This is in opposition to commonly held notions that duty-bearer norms are merely a top-down imposition by formal state-sanctioned rules and instead advances a multiple duty-bearer framework, with empirical evidence from the ground where accountability of duty-bearers is claimed and contested.