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Human mobility as a resource in conflict: the case of Syria
Human movement remains the primary unit of analysis in much theorising on forced migration and humanitarian practice in conflict. Whilst movement is often portrayed as an indicator of vulnerability, sometimes even as a problem per se, I suggest thinking of mobility, taking this broader term to signify the ‘freedom to choose where to be’ (de Haas 2014), as a resource through which one can mitigate the consequences of violence and conflict and access a better life. In this context, vulnerability, understood as the capacity to cope with conflict, is de-coupled from movement, since mobility, as the ability to choose where to be, includes the option to stay. Class (Van Hear 2004, 2014), encompassing differential access to economic, social and cultural forms of capital, shapes the ability to rely on mobility as a resource. Mobility in conflict is both socially stratified and socially stratifying as, by being differently available, mobility empowers individuals who already have more extensive forms of capital to rely on, whilst increasing the vulnerability of those who do not. The case of Syria displays many of these dynamics and illustrates the urgency of adopting a wider lens in the analysis of mobility and vulnerability in conflict.
‘Refugees asked to fish for themselves’: the role of livelihoods trainings for Kampala’s urban refugees
As refugees’ average length in exile becomes longer and the world’s number of displaced people rises, there is a dire need to focus on assistance that extends beyond the emergency phase. Long-term aid for refugees is commonly known as ‘development assistance’. This aims to enable refugees to secure the basic necessities of life, while also contributing to poverty eradication in refugee hosting areas. UNHCR has highlighted livelihoods as a main tool for fostering refugee self-reliance in impoverished countries. The importance of livelihoods is emphasised in the 2014-2018 Global Strategy for Livelihoods, which introduced thirteen priority countries for livelihoods initiatives. Uganda is one of these countries, and serves as the basis for this study. One reason for the heightened emphasis on livelihoods lies in the fact that approximately half the global refugee population lives in urban, non-camp settings, a number set to increase. The lack of material assistance offered in urban areas requires refugees to be self-reliant, either through finding work or becoming entrepreneurs. To promote refugee employment, UNHCR’s implementing and operational partners offer livelihoods training in lieu of material assistance in cities around the world. However, little critical analysis of the role and outcomes of these trainings currently exists. This study focuses on the livelihoods assistance offered to urban refugees since 2009, when the UNHCR policy on refugee protection and solutions in urban areas granted refugees the right to reside in urban areas and advocated for their protection in these spaces. As a result, many organisations began livelihoods operations in urban settings, offering business training as well as specific skills training. Notably, organisations offering trainings include not just INGOs or national organisations serving refugees but organisations created and led by refugees. Through a review of UNHCR policies and documents relating to livelihoods and urban refugees since 2009, and through three months of fieldwork in Kampala, Uganda, I investigated the role of livelihoods trainings offered to refugees. Here, I present the current stage of refugee livelihood programming and policies, and the state and results of livelihoods trainings on the ground in Kampala. I overview the content and main details of these trainings, as well as highlight their contradictions: the results they offer as opposed to what they are promised to provide. I then examine the challenges surrounding these trainings, which stem both from the local context as well as the institutional structure of livelihoods assistance. I conclude with recommendations for practitioners and policymakers.
The role of the special advocate as an alternative to non-disclosure: examining and looking beyond the balancing act
In the post-cold war period, a number of countries, including the UK, Canada, and Australia, sought to detain and in some cases deport asylum seekers and refugees where they were believed to pose a security risk to the state. In this context, governments claimed that security related evidence should not be disclosed to the individual or their legal representative as this would harm state security interests. However, as this stance compromised entrenched procedural fairness rights, it inevitably became the subject of protests and extensive litigation. In response, the special advocate procedure was devised by the UK government (and later adopted in Canada) on the basis that it reconciled the competing interests of state security and individual procedural fairness. In light of this, it has been suggested that the regime could prove a useful addition to the laws of other states. This, together with the notion that the regime has been subjected to transplantation and yet continues to be contested (appearing in recent litigation and advisory body publications) presents an opportunity to consider its effectiveness and the broader implications of its adoption. Reflecting upon its use to date this paper discusses the implications of the regime including how effective it is in achieving the balance it is intended to deliver and therefore whether or not the regime (or a reformed version) should continue to be used and be adopted by additional states. In doing so, the paper considers whether it is in fact possible to assess the security side of the balancing act and analyses the regime in light of its impact upon the separation of powers in a state, including its effect upon the accountability of executive decision makers and long-term sustainment of public confidence in the court system. Beyond this, the regime’s potential to become normalised, that is, applied within other areas of law beyond the forced migration context is also explored.
EU Law and the detainability of asylum-seekers
ABSTRACT: This article examines detention of asylum-seekers, more specifically how European Union law simultaneously constructs the asylum-seeker as a detainable subject, while also limiting States’ powers of detention. The power to detain is limited by international refugee and human rights law, but European Union law sets more stringent standards. While international refugee law regards the asylum-seeker as a presumptive refugee, European Union law seems to take a different view. Nowadays, the legal and physical rite of passage from irregular migrant to asylum-seeker to refugee defines the predicament of refugees who seek protection in the European Union. Asylum-seekers are vulnerable to detention as irregular entrants, when they are in transit in search of effective protection, and if they become deportable under the Dublin System. Coercive forms of detention are, too glibly in our view, assumed to be permitted to ensure they cooperate with identification and registration processes. The article aims to problematise this detainability of asylum-seekers, examining in particular how their increasing deportability and transferability may increase their detainability. Drawing on empirical examples from the treatment of refugees arriving in the European Union in 2015, it suggests that the Union’s legal limits on detention need further implementation and institutionalisation.
The search of the outer edges of non-refoulement in Europe: exceptionality and flagrant breaches
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationship between the prohibition on refoulement under human rights law (in particular under the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR)) and protections under international refugee law. It illustrates that the two systems, human rights and refugee law, develop their protections in different modes. I illustrate this divergent development as a riposte to the claim that non-refoulement under human rights law effectively broadens the protection against refoulement in refugee law. Of course, in some ways, that claim is correct, but in other respects human rights non-refoulement is highly limited, particular as regards which rights violations will lead to protection against return. Currently, it tends to focus on Article 3 ECHR, the right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. The chapter critiques the outer edges of human rights non-refoulement, in particular the ECtHR’s ‘flagrant breach’ caselaw. Chapter in the book "Human Rights and the Refugee Definition: Comparative Legal Practice and Theory", edited by Bruce Burson and David J Cantor.
Militaries and humanitarian innovation: opportunities and risks
In this working paper, we call for greater recognition and new thinking about military actors as a serious subject of study within humanitarian innovation discourse. In so doing, we seek to contribute to the Humanitarian Innovation Project’s (HIP) broader interdisciplinary agenda of rethinking the frontiers of the humanitarian system, while also encouraging the further conceptual development of a nascent debate around military actors and humanitarian innovation. This paper presents preliminary findings to be developed further through subsequent research and consultative feedback. We draw from case studies to illustrate the opportunities, risks and challenges of innovation diffusion and exchange between militaries and humanitarians, but these are not meant to comprise a comprehensive ‘inventory’ of all available data. It is, rather, our aim to generate interest in further research on the topic. Our focus is on two leading models of military innovation management, the US and UK military forces.
Refuge from Syria: Policy Recommendations
These policy recommendations on the Syrian humanitarian crisis are the outcome of a workshop held at the Refugee Studies Centre on 9 December 2015. This workshop brought together researchers and practitioners to present findings from recent research into the perceptions, aspirations and behaviour of refugees from Syria, host community members, and practitioners in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Professor Dawn Chatty presented her British Academy funded research, alongside other researchers including Eduardo Chemin (Çağ Üniversitesi, Turkey), Filippo Dionigi (LSE), Annika Rabo (Stockholm University), and Maira Seeley (Generations For Peace, Jordan)
Book Review: Displacement economies in Africa: paradoxes of crisis and creativity
Given the scarcity of conceptual work on the economic lives of displaced populations, Displacement Economies in Africa: Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativity, edited by Amanda Hammar, is a welcome contribution. The main question of this collection is: What does displacement generate in terms of economies? As the subtitle of the book suggests, the concept of ‘paradox’ is key to unpacking this question. While displacement often dismantles people’s pre-existing capital, networks, and expertise, a range of new relationships, socio-economic spaces, and creative strategies can also emerge from experiences of dislocation. Drawing upon empirical studies across Sub-Saharan Africa, this book sheds light on these paradoxical simultaneities – destruction and creation, loss and gain, despair and hope, and confinement and mobility – that human displacement produces in different contexts.
Economic reintegration of returnees in Liberia
Since the early 2000s, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization has been implementing economic recovery programmes for returnees in certain post-conflict countries. It remains uncertain, however, to what extent these training programmes have been instrumental in returnees’ economic reintegration. Liberia has gradually been recovering from the social and economic damage caused by fourteen years of brutal civil war, between 1989 and 2003, which forcibly displaced about 700,000 Liberians outside the country. A significant number of Liberians repatriated following the final ceasefire agreement in 2003; and in 2012, when the UN High Commissioner for Refugees invoked the Cessation Clause, tens of thousands of the remaining refugees returned. Liberia’s limited infrastructure and weak economic foundation, however, have caused concern about its capacity to successfully integrate the new arrivals.
Open wallet, closed doors: exploring Japan’s low acceptance of asylum seekers
Even as forced displacement has reached an unprecedented scale globally, with war in Syria, violence and political instability in parts of Africa and the Middle East, and persecution in Asia and South America sending millions fleeing within and beyond their countries, Japan has remained largely untouched. While Japan in 2014 witnessed a record number of asylum applications since its 1981 ratification of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the numbers remain small and the approval rate is extremely modest. Of the 5,000 individuals who filed for asylum in 2014, just 11 were granted refugee status—a 0.2 percent acceptance rate. In total, Japan was home to nearly 12,500 refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless persons as of December 2014, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Asylum seekers with pending applications for refugee status comprised the vast majority. While its acceptance of refugees and asylum seekers is very limited, Japan is one of the most generous countries in terms of financial contributions to support international humanitarian efforts. The world’s third largest economy, Japan in 2014 was the fourth largest donor to UNHCR, providing more than US $181 million. And Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged a further $1.6 billion at the UN General Assembly in September 2015 to fund new assistance for refugees and internally displaced persons in Syria and Iraq, as well as peace-building efforts in the Middle East and Africa. Despite its financial generosity, Japan has gained a reputation as a closed country to refugees….
Humanitarian innovation and refugee protection
About the Book: This book seeks to think differently about what we recognize as "global institutions" and how they could work better for the people who need them most. By so doing, the contributions show that there is a group of institutions that influence enough people’s lives in significant enough ways through what they protect, provide or enable that they should be considered, together, as global institutions. The United Nations, the World Bank, the internet as well as private military and security companies leave a heavy footprint on the social, political and economic landscape of the planet. We are all aware in different ways of the existence of these global institutions but their importance in achieving change in the twenty-first century is often underestimated. In this book, contributors seek to explain what associations exist between change in global institutions and the reduction of poverty and inequality as well as the achievement of security and justice. The work makes sense of processes of change and identifies the most significant obstacles that exist, offering suggestions for future action that will be of interest to students and scholars of global institutions.
Research in Brief: ERPUM and the Drive to Deport Unaccompanied Minors
This research brief traces the institutional dynamics surrounding the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM), the first ever EU project attempting to organise the administrative deportation of unaccompanied minor asylum-seekers (UAMs). Besides Sweden, who coordinated the pilot project, its other core members were Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark and Belgium as observers. The project initially singled out children from Iraq and Afghanistan, and later, Morocco. The first phase of ERPUM (ERPUM I) was initiated in January 2011, and its second stage (ERPUM II) began in December 2012. The pilot was discontinued in June 2014, without having deported any children to the targeted countries.
Dilemmas of representation: organisations’ approaches to portraying refugees and asylum seekers
Intergovernmental and nongovernmental organisations use images of refugees and asylum seekers to reach out to potential donors, inform their respective audiences, and demonstrate the positive impacts that the organisations’ activities have on the populations with whom they work. This pilot study seeks to better understand how organisations choose these images and what they hope to communicate with them. By interviewing representatives involved in the image selection process at both large and small organisations with a variety of outreach efforts and humanitarian goals, we investigate the decision-making procedures behind the images that connect subject and viewer. Our findings focus on (1) relationships formed between organisations and the audiences they target through images of refugees and asylum seekers, (2) relationships between organisations and the subjects of images they use, and (3) organisations’ strategies to position themselves in the 'humanitarian marketplace’ (Crisp 2010: 75) through image use. We then use the anthropological concept of gift exchange relations (Weiner 1992; Mauss 1990), as well as concepts of solidarity and 'post-humanitarianism' (Chouliaraki 2011: 364), to identify the implications of these relationships for both organisations and the subjects of the images they use. We end with suggestions for further investigation into the creation and use of images of refugees and asylum seekers.
Assessing economic impacts of hosting refugees: conceptual, methodological and ethical gaps
This paper explores a variety of approaches used to assess and measure the economic impact of refugees on their host communities and states. It identifies theoretical, methodological, and ethical gaps in the existing literature, and also problematizes some of the assumptions and rationales behind current debates about measuring refugees’ economic impact on host populations and states. It begins by presenting the key arguments and approaches within the existing literature on analysing the economic impact of refugees on their host communities and states. It then seeks to elucidate some significant conceptual, methodological and ethical gaps in the field, drawing primarily upon cost-benefit analyses in the migration literature in order to identify several cautionary implications. Finally, as a way forward, the paper highlights some alternative approaches to understanding and assessing the impact of hosting refugees.
Research in Brief: The Syrian Humanitarian Disaster: Disparities in perceptions, aspirations and behaviour in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey
The speed with which Syria disintegrated into extreme violence and armed conflict shocked the world and left the humanitarian aid regime in turmoil as agencies struggled to respond to the growing displacement crisis on Syria’s borders. The mass displacement has left the neighbouring states of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey in a quandary as to how to effectively provide protection for these people seeking refuge. None have granted the displaced refugee status; each has established temporary measures to deal with this crisis. In many cases the displaced and the host communities have not been consulted and thus tensions have quickly emerged among host communities, displaced Syrians and humanitarian policymakers and practitioners. The current situation is unsustainable and is testing the humanitarian aid regime’s preferred ‘solution’ of containing the crisis regionally. This research brief reports the findings of a study that has sought to: 1) understand the disparity in perceptions, aspirations, and behaviour of refugees from Syria, members of host communities, and practitioners in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey; and 2) identify what measures, if any, are regarded as important by the three target communities for future return and reintegration in Syria when conditions permit.
Forced migration in the ‘First World’: questioning the logics of a humanitarian concept
This paper uses the example of post-Olympics displacement in East London to challenge the boundaries of forced migration, and to question assumptions about where forced migration happens. The case of displacement in East London is helpful precisely because it lies on the margins of the forced migration concept. Testing forced migration at its limits allows for an interrogation of the assumptions that lie at its core. The following questions guide this exploration at the margins: How might the ideological underpinnings of the current category of forced migration exclude displacement in wealthy, developed countries from analysis? What does the exclusion of displacement in such contexts say about the nature of the forced migration category, about its implicit power relations and dynamics? How does the case of development and displacement in East London challenge the forced migration concept, and call for an evaluation of its underlying logic? Through exploring these questions, this paper puts forward two primary arguments. First, I argue that the forced migration concept is founded on an implicit humanitarian logic. Second, I argue that, if scholars are to truly consider the power implicit in locating forced migration elsewhere, it is necessary to both turn away from an apolitical humanitarian logic and to ‘invert the gaze’ by also examining displacement as it happens in the ‘West’. This paper thus serves as an initial call to critically reflect on forced migration’s underlying humanitarian logic—to consider, for instance, why displacement and dispossession are almost exclusively assumed to occur ‘elsewhere’ and the potential power implications this geography of forced migration might hold. Rather than seek definitive conclusions on causal links between development and displacement in East London, I conduct an exploratory and descriptive study that will raise questions for further research.
Research in Brief: Refugee Economies
There is a global displacement crisis. Around the world more people are displaced than at any time since the Second World War, and there are around 20 million refugees. Yet alongside this trend of rising numbers, governments’ political willingness to provide access to protection and assistance is in decline. In the face of these challenges, the existing global refugee regime is not fit for purpose. It tends to view refugees and displacement as a uniquely humanitarian issue. When people have to leave their homes or cross borders, the conventional response is to meet their immediate needs in terms of food, shelter, clothing, water, and sanitation. The approach is broadly effective for providing emergency relief, but in the long run, it can lead to dependency. Over half the world’s refugees are in protracted refugee situations, having been in exile for at least 5 years. For these people, the average length in exile is around 17 years. From Kenya to Thailand, many are hosted in refugee camps in which they do not have the right to work or freedom of movement. Effectively, they are ‘warehoused’ pending an opportunity to return home, with significant implications for human rights and international security. This conventional approach is unsustainable. Host countries are closing borders; international donors are less willing to indefinitely support large numbers of refugees within camps; and refugees embark on dangerous journeys in search of protection. In this context, there is a need to rethink refugee assistance. Existing approaches too often ignore the skills, talents, and aspirations of refugees themselves. Yet refugees have capacities. They need not inevitably be a ‘burden’ on host states but have the potential to contribute economically as well as socio-culturally. Around the world, even under the most constrained circumstances, and sometimes under the radar, refugees in camps and urban areas engage in significant economic activity, and in doing so often create opportunities for themselves and others. Development-based solutions have for a long time been recognised as one way to overcome the worst consequences of protracted refugee situations. There has been a longstanding debate on the transition from ‘relief-to-development’ in refugee work. However, such approaches have historically suffered from a range of weaknesses. They have generally been state-centric, relying upon the presumption that donor governments might provide additional development assistance to induce host states to commit to self-reliance or long-term local integration for refugees. What has been lacking is a focus on the market-based activities of refugees themselves.
Research in Brief: Bottom-up Humanitarian Innovation
Innovation is playing an increasingly transformative role across the humanitarian system. International organisations, NGOs, governments, business, military, and community-based organisations are drawing upon the language and methods of innovation to address the challenges and opportunities of a changing world. At the Humanitarian Innovation Project, we are developing the concept of bottom-up innovation, in order to introduce an alternative way of thinking about the role of innovation in the humanitarian sector. Rather than only considering how innovation can help international aid agencies to be more adaptable and effective, a focus on bottom-up innovation aims to enable aid agencies to support the creativity and skills of affected populations. Bottom-up innovation can be defined as the way in which crisis-affected communities themselves engage in creative problem-solving, finding solutions to their own challenges. This brief provides selected findings from our research in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Jordan, and the United States.
The normative terrain of the global refugee regime
The global refugee regime encompasses the rules, norms, principles, and decision-making procedures that govern states’ responses to refugees. It comprises a set of norms, primarily those entrenched in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which defines who is a refugee and the rights to which such people are entitled. It also comprises an international organization, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has supervisory responsibility for ensuring that states meet their obligations toward refugees. The underlying ethos of the refugee regime is a reciprocal commitment to the principle of nonrefoulement, that is, the obligation not to return a person to a country where she faces a well-founded fear of persecution. As the preamble to the 1951 Convention makes clear, the premise of the refugee regime is international cooperation; specifically, that states reciprocally commit to provide protection to refugees....
Help refugees help themselves: let displaced Syrians join the labor market
There are now some 60 million displaced people around the world, more than at any time since World War II. The Syrian crisis alone, which has created the largest refugee shock of the era, has displaced some ten million people, around four million of them across international borders. In recent months, Western attention has focused almost exclusively on the flood of these refugees to Europe. Yet most of the Syrian refugees have been taken in not by Western countries but by Syria’s neighboring states: Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, whose capacity has been overwhelmed. Lebanon, with a population of around four million and a territory smaller than Maryland, is hosting over a million Syrian refugees. Young people are overrepresented in the refugee population, so that more than half of the school-aged children in Lebanon are now Syrian. International policy toward the Syrian refugee crisis is both antiquated and fueled by panic....