This article examines the phenomenon of internal displacement from the perspective of the existing legal framework and those measures which should guarantee protection for internally displaced populations worldwide. With this aim in mind, the article begins by assessing the role of international law and try to ascertain which legal norms are applicable to protect internally displaced persons. As a second step, it analyzes the question of responsibility for the protection of internally displaced persons, i.e. whether this lies with the state of origin through its national law, or rather with the international community, and examines the relevant provisions of international law. While concluding and identifying the existing gaps in the current legislation, the article demonstrates that internally displaced persons should become the objects of a specific system of law and legal protection. At the same time, the text intends to contribute to the contemporary debate promoting efforts to strengthen the protection of internally displaced persons and to disseminate knowledge about this vulnerable group of people.

Given the whole spectrum of doubts and controversies that arise in discussions about laws affecting historical memory (and their subcategory of memory laws), the question of assessing them in the context of international standards of human rights protection – and in particular the European system of human rights protection – is often overlooked. Thus this article focuses on the implications and conditions for introducing memory laws in light of international human rights standards using selected examples of various types of recently-adopted Polish memory laws as case studies. The authors begin with a brief description of the phenomenon of memory laws and the most significant threats that they pose to the protection of international human rights standards. The following sections analyse selected Polish laws affecting historical memory vis-à-vis these standards. The analysis covers non-binding declaratory laws affecting historical memory, and acts that include criminal law sanctions. The article attempts to sketch the circumstances linking laws affecting historical memory with the human rights protection standards, including those entailed both in binding treaties and other instruments of international law.