A true understanding of the problematic of rights of the refugees and the displaced demands a genuine understanding of the discourse and practice of a bunch of international humanitarian and human rights laws. Here, we define ‘law’ as a morally inspired system of rules, enforced through a set of institutions. Such a definition approaches ‘law’ from both a normative as well as a causal perspective. Seen from such perspectives, the study of law introduces us to the formal/approved patterns of the refugee regime. Simultaneously, it acts as a moral and practical tool to negotiate with various power formations, of formal or informal nature, both within and without the boundaries of nation states. In the following section, various aspects of this issue have been brilliantly discussed by well-known experts from around the world.

Jeevan Thiagarajah and Dinusha Pathiraja, in their thought provoking article, have offered a discursive analysis of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with focus on the different types of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka and have found that ‘Sri Lanka has in many respects failed’ to address this issue. The authors await the completion of The Ending Displacement Act and hope that ‘it will be able to turn the lives of the internally displaced in Sri Lanka towards a better future’. On the other hand, Oishik Sircar, a bright young scholar of legal science, seeks to give the ‘increasingly self-contained discourse’ of international women' rights movement its missing link: the postcolonial angle.