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Found 101 matches for palestinian refugees
Palestine online: an emerging virtual homeland?
Prompted by Palestinians’ recent occupation of cyberspace as a new terrain on which to conduct their struggle, this paper is an inquiry into the existence of a virtual Palestinian homeland online. It traces the initial process of inscription of the land of Palestine with the meaning of ‘homeland’ at the turn of the twentieth century, comparing that process with Palestinians’ online activities. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s theory of storytelling (1936) and Pierre Nora’s concept of the distinction between lieux and milieu de memoire (1989), it assesses how Palestinians’ storytelling practices of ‘emplacement’ several generations before exile inform our understanding of Palestinian refugees’ storytelling in cyberspace today. It argues that, while insufficient to replace Palestinians’ original homeland or to satisfy their political aspirations, ‘virtual Palestine’ does exist and offers a window into visions of a future homeland as expressed by Palestinians not usually heard from.
Disseminating findings from research with Palestinian children and adolescents
For more than half a century Palestinian children and their care givers have lived a temporary existence in the dramatic and politically volatile landscape of the Middle East. These children have been captive to various sorts of stereotyping, both academic and popular. They have been projected, as have their parents and grandparents, as passive victims without the benefit of international protection. And they have become the beneficiaries of numerous humanitarian aid packages based on the Western model of child development and the psychosocial approach to intervention. In January 1999, a research project examining the impact of prolonged forced migration and armed conflict on the lives of Palestinian children and young people was initiated in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. The project had several goals. One was to bridge the theoretical and applied divide common to much of the research directed at Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. Another was to test and challenge some of the Western medical and developmental assumptions concerning child and adolescent development. A third was to engage in multi-disciplinary, participatory research to draw out the similarities and differences between Palestinian refugee communities separated for more than 50 years by the national borders of different states.
Conference Report: The Politics, Human Rights and Security Implications of Protracted Refugee Situations
The two-day workshop, sponsored by the Alchemy Foundation and the United Nations University, brought together a range of experts from UNHCR, the World Bank, NGOs, states and academia with the aim of developing a framework for comprehensive solutions to protracted refugee situations (PRSs). The eventual output from the workshop will be an edited volume and a policy briefing paper that is intended to influence states, intergovernmental organizations and the work of the new Peace-Building Commission. The workshop divided into two parts: the first day on thematic papers, and the second on case studies. The thematic papers considered the relationship between asylum policy and PRSs, historical precedents, durable solutions, the relationship between PRSs and conflict and security, and the roles of humanitarian actors, development actors, and civil society. The case studies included contributions on the situation of Afghan, Somali, Southern Sudanese, Palestinian, Bhutanese, and Burmese refugees. The papers themselves are to be published in book form by the middle of 2007. This summary highlights the main discussions and the way in which they have advanced the debate on PRSs. Reflecting the aim of the project, which is primarily to influence policy and to effect change, the summary divides into three areas: conceptual, normative and institutional, and political.
Development and protection challenges of the Syrian refugee crisis
The Syria Regional Response Plan 6 (RRP6) 2014 provides an increased focus on early recovery, social cohesion interventions and a transition from assistance to development-led interventions, alongside the continuing large-scale humanitarian assistance and protection programme. In a region already hosting millions of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, the scale of the Syrian crisis is putting immense additional strains on the resources and capacities of neighbouring countries and the international humanitarian system. The 3,300 refugees on average arriving in neighbouring countries every day in 2014 place a large burden on the protection capacity of the host countries and international actors and further accentuate the already severe negative social, economic and human developmental impacts on the host countries of the region.With no prospects of the civil war abating in Syria and with a peace process that might encourage refugee return even further away, the displacement is becoming protracted.
Ensuring quality education for young refugees from Syria (12-25 years): a mapping exercise (summary)
This policy note provides an executive summary of the RSC research report, 'Ensuring Quality Education for Young Refugees from Syria (12-25 years): A mapping exercise'. This research focuses on access to education by refugee youth, a crucial yet often overlooked element in the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis. Outlining educational demand and supply, the report analyses good practice and gaps in education services for refugee youth from Syria (including Palestinian, Kurdish and Turkmen refugee youth) in Jordan, Lebanon, Northern Iraq/Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Turkey. This publication was supervised by Professor Dawn Chatty.
Palestine at the UN: the PLO and UNRWA in the 1970s
This article examines the relationship of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) during the 1970s, the period when the PLO reached the zenith of its power in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the Levant. Based on archival United Nations (UN) and UNRWA documents, as well as the PLO's own communications and publications, the article argues that the organization approached its relationship with UNRWA as part of a broader strategy to gain international legitimacy at the UN. That approach resulted in a complex set of tensions, specifically over which of the two institutions truly served and represented Palestinian refugees. In exploring these tensions, this article also demonstrates how the “question of Palestine” was in many ways an international issue.
Politics resettled: the case of the Palestinian diaspora in Chile
Resettlement needs to be better understood as a political event and process. Along with repatriation and local integration, it is considered one of three traditional ‘durable solutions’ for refugees, with ‘success’ typically assessed by whether resettled refugees are provided with the tools they need to achieve ‘integration’ in their new ‘host-state’. Yet, how much do we understand resettlement beyond these policy-oriented categories? It is no secret that resettlement is an inherently political tool at the national and international level. And with increasingly stricter immigration policies in the West, attention has shifted to emerging resettlement actors, such as Latin American countries, to fill protection gaps. Although states are essentially in full control over who they admit, they are not the only actors with distinct (political) interests in relation to being engaged and involved in resettlement processes. The gradual withdrawal of states from resettlement has been followed by the creation of alternative roles for civil society. For example, migrant(/refugee) communities provide assistance to others from that group to adapt in their new host countries and are essentially portrayed as resources for integration akin to any NGO. Overall, there is a lack of understanding about what this ‘co-national resettlement support’ represents for refugees and their communities alike, and about the (political) significance of such support. In 2008, 117 Palestinian refugees were resettled to Chile from Iraq. In parallel to the ‘formal’ implementation of the project by the Chilean Government, UNHCR and their NGO partner the Vicaría, the long-settled Palestinian community supported their ‘compatriots’ by providing material and cultural resources. To merely focus on the relation of these practices to integration would obscure the fact that this participation was also highly politicised. Rather than positing the engagement of the ‘Chilean-Palestinian’ community as static and essentialised, this paper delves deeper into the motivations, worries and political repercussions that characterised their involvement in resettlement. It focuses on how the project was negotiated, framed and performed at both macro and micro levels by various actors within and peripheral to the Palestinian community in Chile. By conceptualising Chilean-Palestinians as a ‘diaspora’, I argue that the arrival of Palestinian refugees was an event where different (re-)formulations of (Chilean-)Palestinian identity and politics were centre stage. By using this project as a case study and applying diaspora theory as a framework, it becomes possible to elucidate the politics of resettlement and move beyond mere policy and state-centric considerations.
UNRWA and the Palestinian precedent: Lessons from the international response to the Palestinian refugee crisis
Considering the major refugee crises currently facing the world, this essay argues that an examination of earlier refugee crises is needed in order to devise an effective international response today. On this basis, it assesses the unique international system that was set up in response to one of the largest refugee crises of the twentieth century: that of the Palestinians. Like the Syrian refugee crisis today, the Palestinian case encapsulated the connection between global politics and mass migration. On this basis, this article evaluates the merits of the international organization responsible for serving the Palestinian refugees: the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Identifying and assessing the key features of the UNRWA system, the essay argues that its uniqueness generated both benefits and many disadvantages for the Palestinian refugees it served. In particular, the Palestinians’ ineligibility for UNHCR services has left them uniquely vulnerable when seeking international protection. Creating a similar international organization to serve Syrian refugees today is likely to cause similar problems, and will raise the question of whether other large refugee populations also need their own UN agencies. However, the internationalist rationale behind the UNRWA system is also contrasted harshly with the current imbalance in the response to the Syrian crisis, whereby a small number of countries are hosting the majority of the refugees. Thus despite its considerable flaws, UNRWA’s precedent still provides important lessons for the crisis today.
Rejecting resettlement: The case of the Palestinians
Palestinian rejection of resettlement was driven by political concerns. This case study shows the importance of engaging directly with refugees when devising durable solutions. Over their seven decades as a large-scale refugee population, the Palestinians have been remarkably consistent in collectively opposing resettlement as a durable solution to their plight. Both the grass roots and later the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) have repudiated any suggestion of third-country resettlement on the grounds that it would undermine the Palestinians’ political and national rights as a people. Host-country integration was similarly spurned.
Palestinian refuges
Book description: Across a 20th century marked by world wars, regional conflicts, rising and collapsing empires, and the dawn of globalization, the flow of immigrants and asylum seekers reached unprecedented levels. And though America was by far the most popular destination, immigration (voluntary and otherwise) affected virtually every corner of the globe and continues in record numbers today. A comprehensive and timely examination of the history and current status of immigrants and refugees—their stories, the events that led to their movement, and the place of these movements in contemporary history and politics. Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present is an accessible and up-to-date introduction to the key concepts, terms, personalities, and real-world issues associated with the surge of immigration from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. It focuses on the United States, but is also the first encyclopedic work on the subject that reflects a truly global perspective. With contributions from the world's foremost authorities on the subject, Immigration and Asylum offers nearly 200 entries organized around four themes: immigration and asylum; the major migrating groups around the world; expulsions and other forced population movements; and the politics of migration. In addition to basic entries, the work includes in-depth essays on important trends, events, and current conditions. There is no better resource for exploring just how profoundly the voluntary and forced movement of asylum seekers and refugees has transformed the world—and what that transformation means to us today.