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Human rights and forced migration
Chapter 18 in the book Human Rights: Politics and Practice. In this book, edited by Michael Goodhart, a team of international experts combine the latest theoretical developments with unrivalled coverage of the practical and political dynamics of human rights. Throughout the text, helpful features support students' learning, challenging them to think critically and to question their own assumptions.
(Loan) cycles of innovation: researching refugee-run micro-finance
Refugees across the global South are increasingly choosing to venture into cities rather than staying in camps. Currently, approximately half of the global refugee population now lives and pursues their livelihoods in non-camp settings. Increasingly, these urban refugees are undertaking their own entrepreneurial initiatives, often in sectors in which they have no prior experience. Most also lack access to the micro-loans that could help them start businesses. Few refugee-serving organisations have comprehensive loan programmes, and micro-finance institutions (MFIs) rarely target refugees as beneficiaries. Lack of legal status often prohibits refugees from becoming MFI clients or opening bank accounts in host countries, and lenders’ fears of refugees leaving the host country increase uncertainty about loan repayments and sources of collateral. Refugees in receipt of free assistance have sometimes perceived loans as handouts, and may not have adequate community or other support to successfully repay loans. Despite these obstacles, and the fact that the majority of urban refugees survive without institutional assistance, little research exists on whether and how they access micro-finance. In particular, refugees’ own micro-savings and micro-lending groups (termed here refugee-run micro-finance) have not been comprehensively researched. This means that, despite an awareness of these groups, there is no real understanding of how they operate within communities, how they interact (if at all) with outside capital providers and the main challenges they face. Our research project, funded by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF), aims to illuminate not only the current state of micro-finance for urban refugees but also how refugees’ own communities and networks can act as sites of innovation for bottom-up micro-finance programmes. We are currently mapping existing initiatives and programmes in Kampala, and have already identified 25 refugee-run micro-finance programmes. Our work aims to expand upon the existing micro-finance structures refugees have created within their own communities, and to learn how these could be linked to MFIs (both Ugandan banks and MFIs and international non-profit lenders such as Kiva). We aim to provide evidence-driven recommendations for micro-finance providers and develop a model that builds on refugee-run micro-finance initiatives. In this way, we hope to provide avenues for urban refugees to directly access capital. To do this, various questions must be more comprehensively answered. What degree of access to financial tools is available to refugees? From a lender’s point of view, what conditions would enable refugees’ access to micro-finance? Are refugee- run micro-loans and micro-savings groups successful and, if so, how could these be expanded?
Military actors and humanitarian innovation: questions, risks and opportunities
The role of military actors in the international humanitarian landscape has expanded over the last two decades. However, despite growing acknowledgment by humanitarians of the need to search ‘outside’ the traditional humanitarian community for new products, processes and innovations, very little systematic research has examined militaries as a reference point for informing humanitarian innovation. The nature of civil–military relations across the humanitarian community is complex and often fractious; that this lack of engagement extends to the discourse around humanitarian innovation is unsurprising. Nonetheless, a major research gap exists in understanding both the risks and lesson-learning opportunities that military actors present to humanitarian innovation. This article looks at military actors as a serious subject of study and debate within the humanitarian innovation discourse, and calls for further research on this topic. We outline three areas of exploration, drawing on research conducted at the Oxford Humanitarian Innovation Project (HIP) in 2015, supported by consultations with expert practitioners, policymakers and researchers from across the aid sector, militaries and academia. Taken together, this work suggests the need for better understanding of both the opportunities and hazards that military actors pose to the humanitarian innovation agenda.
Global governance and forced migration
Chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies (edited by Anna Triandafyllidou). About the book: The Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies offers a comprehensive and unique study of the multi-disciplinary field of international migration and asylum studies. Utilising contemporary information and analysis, this innovative Handbook provides an in depth examination of legal migration management in the labour market and its affect upon families in relation to wider issues of migrant integration and citizenship. With a comprehensive collection of essays written by leading contributors from a broad range of disciplines including sociology of migration, human geography, legal studies, political sciences and economics, the Handbook is a truly multi-disciplinary book approaching the critical questions of: Migration and the labour market; Integration and citizenship; Migration, families and welfare; Irregular migration; Smuggling and trafficking in human beings; and Asylum and forced migration. Organised into short thematic and geographical chapters the Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies provides a concise overview on the different topics and world regions, as well as useful guidance for both the starting and the more experienced reader. The Handbook’s expansive content and illustrative style will appeal to both students and professionals studying in the field of migration and international organisations.
Humanitarian innovation, integration, and the architecture of refugee protection
Chapter in the book "Migration and Integration: New Models for Mobility and Coexistence" (edited by R. Hsu and C. Reinprecht). About the book: Globalization has led to new forms, and dynamics, of migration and mobility. What are the consequences of these changes for the processes of reception, settlement and social integration, for social cohesion, institutional practices and policies? The essays collected in this volume discuss these issues with reference to recent research on migration and mobility in Europe, the US, North and East Africa and South and Southeast Asia. The twenty authors are leading migration researcher from different academic fields such as sociology, geography, political science and cultural studies.
Examining the impact of UNIDO’s training on the economic reintegration of repatriated refugees in Liberia
Drawing upon research in Liberia, this paper explores the impact of UNIDO’s vocational training programmes on promoting the economic integration of returnees. Between 2013 and 2014, UNIDO provided two training programmes in Liberia to help facilitate the process of reintegration of repatriates from neighbouring countries. The research team conducted a study with 74 beneficiaries of these programmes using survey questionnaires and interviews. The study presents mixed findings about the impact of UNIDO’s programmes on these returnees. Even after completion of the training programmes, the majority of trainees remained jobless in an economy damaged by the devastating effects of the Ebola crisis, although most recognized the value of the vocational training provided by UNIDO. Given the multi-faceted nature of economic integration, the provision of training programmes alone may be limited in enabling meaningful integration of returnees into fragile post-crisis environments. The research also produced some concrete recommendations to assist UNIDO in its efforts to develop more effective programmes for the reintegration of returnees. Additional studies are required to better understand the conditions under which vocational training becomes most relevant to repatriating refugees who need to construct their economic foundation in a post-conflict country.
Book Review: Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism
Often portrayed as a ‘state of exception’ (Agamben, 1995), refugee camps are typically associated with images of anarchy, disorder, violence or insecurity. In part, these perceptions can be attributed to the dearth of comprehensive books that focus on existing governance and political systems inside refugee camps, with the exception of a few seminal works (e.g. Agier, 2011; Lischer, 2005; Turner, 2010). Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism is a major contribution to this field of study. McConnachie marshals detailed empirical evidence to challenge prevailing assumptions and argues that refugee camps should be recognized as vibrant spaces where political, cultural and social lives emerge, extending beyond a conception of camps as ‘exceptional’ legal and political spaces. Drawing upon in-depth fieldwork in the Karen refugee camps in Thailand, this book elucidates everyday practices of governance and the administration of justice in the quotidian lives of camp populations.
Home-making during protracted exile: diverse responses of refugee families in the face of remigration
Through in-depth case studies about repatriation decision-making among Liberian refugees, this article examines how different processes of home-making during prolonged exile affects their return decisions and result in diverse familial responses to repatriation. Conceptualizations of forced displacement are often tied to notions about “loss of homeland” and exile, with references made to being literally “out of place.” This, however, ignores the reality that during protracted exile in a refugee camp refugees also establish links to new places and become “emplaced,” creating a new “home” that is meaningful to them. Importantly, even among those living in the same refugee camp, this process of emplacement is experienced differently, mediated by age, gender, marital status, and personal goals. When refugees consider returning to their country of origin, refugee families often struggle to come up with unified agreements about remigration decisions, leading to internal contestation among family members who have different aspirations and expectations. Drawing upon over 300 interviews, the article reveals how different patterns of home-making impact refugees’ decisions whether to repatriate or remain in exile and highlights some of the problems inherently embedded in the promotion of repatriation as the best durable solution for all refugees.
Innovation spaces: lessons from the United Nations
This paper explores the notion of ‘innovation spaces’ within the UN system, as physical and virtual laboratories for innovation. Using empirical research in a range of innovation labs the authors explore four key questions: what form UN innovation labs have taken, what has motivated their creation, what their aims and objectives are, and what impact they are having. The answers to these questions promote reflection on the future of innovation spaces, particularly an analysis of whether a model of ‘siloed’ innovation spaces will survive in the humanitarian system. The paper demonstrates the important role that innovation labs play in the UN system, as well as grappling with the challenges they face.
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.