Prevention of forced displacement: the inconsistencies of a concept

Since the inception of its popularity in the 1990s, the concept of prevention has become a staple of almost all important attempts to delimitate the scope of humanitarian action in the field of forced displacement. The thesis of this article is that, despite its omnipresence, the concept not only remains ill-defined, but is also so much ridden with internal inconsistencies as to render it all but impractical as a basis for policy design in the humanitarian field.