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The antecedents of forced migration in the Middle East
The Ottoman Empire was challenged in the nineteenth century to address, organize, and manage the mass influx of peoples from its border lands with Imperial Russia into its southern provinces. The Refugee and Immigrant Code and Commission, together with the General Administration for Refugee Affairs established the first 'modern' systems of resettlement. This chapter examines the context and mechanisms which the Ottoman Sublime Porte implemented to address the humanitarian crises which unfolded along its borders with Czarist Russia between 1850 and the 1900s. Chatty engages with the significance of the Tanzimaat (Reforms) and the manner in which migrants (refugees and immigrants) were instrumentalized to revive the ailing agricultural sector of the Empire, as well dampen down local feuds among host communities. Many of the humanitarian practices established by the Ottomans continued into the Inter-War Era. However, twentieth and twenty-first-century humanitarianism exhibited ruptures with many of these established practices.
Forced migration
Chapter 54 in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Development.
Supreme Judgecraft: Non-Refoulement and the end of the UK-Rwanda ‘deal’?
In R (on the application of AAA (Syria) and others) the UK Supreme Court held that the Secretary of State’s policy to remove protection seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. Rwanda is not, at present, a safe third country (‘STC’). There are, the Supreme Court found, “substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk that asylum claims will not be determined properly, and that asylum seekers will in consequence be at risk of being returned directly or indirectly to their country of origin.” Should this occur “refugees will face a real risk of ill-treatment in circumstances where they should not have been returned at all” (para 105). We argue that the Supreme Court’s legal reasoning and evidential assessment are both impeccable, applying legal principles that are well-embedded in international and domestic law to very clear evidence. However, the UK government’s responses are deeply troubling, from the perspectives of refugee protection, international legality, and the rule of law in the UK.
Key informant interviews: a practical guide for refugee and displacement researchers
Interviews with key informants are an important component of any research project dealing with refugee, displacement and humanitarian issues. Whether you are talking to a politician, a government official, a UN or NGO employee or a civil society leader, they provide an invaluable means of gaining access to factual and topical information; an understanding of the historical context of your project; as well as ideas, insights and opinions that can shed a new and different light on the evidence you have collected by other means. In my experience, they can also be one of the most stimulating parts of the research process, more enjoyable in many ways than administering a survey, trawling through archival records or reading reams of secondary literature. Here I provide a set of 8 key guidelines, based on my own experience as an interviewer and interviewee over the past 40 years. While your approach will evidently have to be revised and adapted according to the person you are meeting and the context in which you are meeting them, I believe that these guidelines provide a solid basis for any key informant interviews that you undertake in the course of your research. Please note that these guidelines do not apply to interviews with refugees, displaced people and host population members.
Refugee burden-and-responsibility sharing: Revisiting the debate on the right to compensation to refugee-hosting states
Much of the world’s rising refugee population is situated in developing countries most of which struggle to fulfil their developmental obligations towards their own citizens, while the better financially-placed countries are increasingly changing their asylum policies to avoid most of the obligations that come with the admission of high numbers of impromptu refugees and asylum seekers. The refugee-burden and responsibility-sharing landscape is evidently uneven and inequitable. Even as the more recent adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees seeks to address the global imbalances in refugee burden- and responsibility-sharing and re-affirms states’ commitments to refugee protection and support for host countries and communities, its strategy remains grounded in the traditional durable solutions. It does not address the issue of the responsibility of refugee-producing states. Scholarship in this regard, particularly in the late 1980s and 1990s argued that refugee-producing states that engaged in internationally wrongful acts resulting into refugee outflows that in turn created a refugee burden for other states should bear responsibility and pay compensation to the refugee-hosting states. This article aims to develop this argument further with a specific focus on the African region. The African region has in the last three decades seen significant development not only in its normative framework but also in regional cooperation schemes that would provide a strong basis and framework for the implementation of the obligation for refugee-producing states in breach of their international obligations to compensate refugee-hosting states. While the right to compensation, as it were, would not be a panacea to the global refugee crises, it could perhaps have a deterrent effect on states that may act with impunity and make them responsible for their share in causing the refugee situation. It could also incentivize reluctant states to uphold their obligations towards refugees in accordance with international law.
The end of the Rwanda Scheme? R (AAA) v SSHD [2023]
Introduction: On 29 June 2023 a majority of the Court of Appeal ruled that the Government’s plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. Rwanda is not currently a safe third country. Instead, there are substantial grounds for thinking that protection-seekers sent there would not have their claims determined properly and would be returned by Rwanda to situations where they would face persecution and other forms of serious harm (refoulement). You can watch the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, give a summary of the decision here. You can read a summary of the judgement here and the full judgment here. Overall, this judgment upholds the UK’s international legal obligations, affirms the centrality of the prohibition of refoulement, and demonstrates the importance of scrutinising the conditions that protection-seekers will actually face in countries deemed ‘safe’.
Refugees, Deportation and Detention: The Illegal Migration Bill
The first reading of the Illegal Migration Bill took place in the House of Commons on 7th March 2023. The Bill, in its current form, creates a group of people who will be subject to a duty to deport and a power to detain. Refugees, and others within this group with international protection needs, are denied the ability to be recognised and protected as such. The Bill also removes rights from those who have been trafficked and subjected to modern slavery. The post is in two parts. First, a summary of the Bill’s main clauses, second, an initial analysis from an international legal perspective. As will become apparent, the Bill, if passed, denies protection contrary to UK’s international legal obligations. Both this denial of protection, and the distress and violence that the envisaged deportations and detentions will entail, are legally and morally wrong.
Education, ontological security, and preserving hope in liminality: learning from the daily strategies exercised by Syrian refugee youth in Jordan
This article draws on a study with Syrian refugee youth and their teachers to examine how young people, holding liminal social and legal statuses in Jordan, manage uncertainty. Through an analysis of students' experiences, this article describes the varying strategies that they developed to protect their sense of hope across time by maintaining ontological security, or an understanding of self. These findings suggested that refugee youth, unable to navigate uncertainty through their educational spaces, explored alternative ways to actively build hope and sustain a sense of control in their lives. They nurtured hope by constructing a continuous narrative of their experiences, exploring their skills and potential, and forming attachments to ideas of place and possibility. Buildings on these findings, this article argues for the importance of integrating practices within education which respond to refugee youths’ needs to maintain ontological security and hope in the face of uncertainty.
Refugee entrepreneurship in Rwanda
Entrepreneurship plays a central role in Rwanda’s approach to refugee self-reliance and economic integration. In recent years, Rwanda has made significant progress in promoting refugees’ freedom of movement, access to documentation, and right to work, thus creating a friendly environment for business development. To evaluate the opportunities and challenges of refugee entrepreneurship as a vehicle for self-reliance and economic integration in Rwanda, the Refugee Economies Programme conducted qualitative research with Burundian refugee entrepreneurs in two sites: Mahama refugee camp and the capital city of Kigali. This research brief shows how refugees take advantage of their freedom of movement to establish trade networks and engage with the Rwandan economy, explores some of the differences between refugee enterprises in Mahama and Kigali, and includes recommendations for policymakers and development and humanitarian actors for enhancing the feasibility and impact of entrepreneurship support for refugees in Rwanda.
Depression, violence and socioeconomic outcomes among refugees in East Africa: evidence from a multicountry representative survey
Background: Existing research on refugee mental health is heavily skewed towards refugees in high-income countries, even though most refugees (83%) are hosted in low-income and middle-income countries. This problem is further compounded by the unrepresentativeness of samples, small sample sizes and low response rates. Objective: To present representative findings on the prevalence and correlates of depression among different refugee subgroups in East Africa. Methods: We conducted a multicountry representative survey of refugee and host populations in urban and camp contexts in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia (n=15 915). We compared the prevalence of depression between refugee and host populations and relied on regression analysis to explore the association between violence, depression and socioeconomic outcomes. Findings: We found a high prevalence of elevated depressive symptoms (31%, 95% CI 28% to 35%) and functional impairment (62%, 95% CI 58% to 66%) among the refugee population, which was significantly higher than that found in the host population (10% for depressive symptoms, 95% CI 8% to 13% and 25% for functional impairment, 95% CI 22% to 28%) (p<0·001). Further, we observed a dose-response relationship between exposure to violence and mental illness. Lastly, high depressive symptoms and functional impairment were associated with worse socioeconomic outcomes. Conclusion: Our results highlight that refugees in East-Africa-particularly those exposed to violence and extended exile periods-are disproportionately affected by depression, which may also hinder their socioeconomic integration. Clinical implications: Given the high prevalence of depression among refugees in East Africa, our results underline the need for scalable interventions that can promote refugees' well-being.
Offshoring refugees: colonial echoes of the UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership
British proposals to forcibly deport asylum seekers to Rwanda have raised fierce opposition from across the political spectrum in the UK and internationally. These proposals differ from official practices of deportation as they have developed in liberal democracies since the 1970s. There are certainly some international parallels, such as Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’ of ‘offshoring’ asylum, which is often cited as an inspiration. Yet a much clearer precedent involving the forcible movement of people to countries where they have no personal or legal connection existed for many years in the British Empire. Colonial policies of forcible removal, relocation, displacement, and dispersal around the Empire are well established. We draw attention to these longer histories before investigating more recent cases of the dispersal of refugees within the British Empire in the twentieth century. In many cases, such forced dispersal concerned those who had been recognised as refugees who were interned and subsequently moved elsewhere in the Empire. Such policies were designed to prevent the arrival of refugees in the UK. These policies have provided inspiration for asylum practices in some postcolonial states—Israel is reported to have reached an agreement with Uganda and Rwanda to deport asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea, although these are not public. In this paper, we highlight how these colonial practices of forcible displacement of individuals inform the current agreement between the UK and Rwanda.
The meanings of internationalism: a collective discussion on Pan-African, early Soviet, Islamic Socialist and Kurdish internationalisms across the 20th century
‘Few political notions are at once so normative and so equivocal as internationalism’, wrote Perry Anderson 20 years ago. Little has changed: today too, internationalism tends to take the form of a regular exhortation to think or act beyond the border or boundary, yet its political content remains underdetermined. What do we mean when we talk about internationalism? The following discussion sought to approach this question not by returning to first principles – to a definition of internationalism that could stand outside of a given historical context – but by reconstructing different concepts of internationalism developed by a series of lesser studied political movements spanning the 20th century. Musab Younis discusses anticolonial and pan-African internationalisms of the 1920s–40s; Maria Chehonadskih interrogates the interwar Soviet internationalism of Alexander Boganov; Layli Uddin excavates the Islamic socialist activities of Maulana Bhashani; and Dilar Dirik focuses on the meanings of internationalism in the history of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement. These movements bore witness to a fundamental set of shifts in the nature of the international system as empires collapsed and new nation-states were born, while global structures of exploitation and extraction recomposed themselves in the Cold War and post-Cold War landscape. In this context, all conceived of internationalism as a fundamentally revolutionary project.
Refugee-led organisations: towards community-based accountability mechanisms
Refugee-led organisations (RLOs) have gained recognition as significant players in the local and global refugee response system. Refugees have long relied on each other for support, creating both formal associations and informal networks to meet their basic needs. However, it has taken the humanitarian sector some time to recognise the value of RLOs. The Covid-19 crisis demonstrated the importance of RLOs as they stepped up to provide crucial assistance to their fellow refugees at a time when humanitarian agencies were unable to operate at their usual capacity. RLOs and refugee-led networks are also increasingly participating in decision-making spaces and advocating for greater power and resources to be transferred to them. In this context, some RLOs have been successful in accessing donor humanitarian funding and have formed formal partnerships within the humanitarian ecosystem. For many RLOs, transitioning from smaller community-based networks to more formal structures is likely to present significant challenges. RLO leaders are already navigating dilemmas between kinship-based accountability to their beneficiaries and more rigid accountability requirements to their donors and partners. Accountability has been a key focus of the humanitarian sector since the 1990s, and has received renewed attention in the context of the localisation turn. However, there has been little discussion on how RLOs practise accountability and who RLOs are accountable to. As more humanitarian organisations and donors engage with RLOs, this article provides recommendations to humanitarian actors and donors on how to engage with RLOs while preserving RLOs’ autonomy and added value. Drawing from previous experiences in East Africa, this study urges the humanitarian sector to prioritise systems for community accountability rather than placing undue emphasis on donor accountability, in order to achieve better outcomes for affected communities.
Refugee Recognition Regime Country Profile: Lebanon
Lebanon is one of the most important countries to understand the dynamics of the refugee recognition regime. It has received a large number of displaced people, and since the arrival of Syrians, it has been the highest per capita refugee-hosting country in the world. It is, therefore, crucial to understand how displaced persons are received, how their asylum applications are assessed, and how their protection needs are met in the country. This report describes Lebanon’s refugee recognition regime and assesses UNHCR’s quality of recognition process and the quality of protection for asylum seekers and refugees. It provides an overview of existing legislation and brings together original insights from legal aid organisations, UNHCR staff, and asylum seekers and refugees.
Refugee Recognition Regime Country Profile: South Africa
This report examines South Africa’s refugee recognition regime which is typified by an individualised refugee status determination (RSD) system that sets it quite apart from other major refugee-hosting countries in Africa, whose major mode of refugee recognition is group-based. The report focuses on a twenty-year period (1998-2018) highlighting the various areas of contestation within the refugee protection space and South Africa’s adherence to its obligations, under both domestic and international law. Although extensive work has been carried out regarding the quality of RSD process in South Africa, gaps are still evident with respect to the refugee recognition institutions and their relational dynamics and how this impacts the refugee recognition regime and refugee protection generally. The report is based on desk research and original fieldwork in South Africa among various elites working in the refugee protection area as well as refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa drawn from three nationalities: Somalis, Ethiopians and Congolese from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Recognising Refugees: A Review of the Literature and Approaches (1990-2020)
This literature review focuses on research carried out on refugee recognition practices since the 1980s, with a particular emphasis on the years from 1990 to 2020. It was carried out in the initial stages of the RefMig project for our internal use, and we are now making it available more widely to other researchers. We have reviewed the literature based on a keyword search of articles published on refugee status determination, prima facie recognition, country of origin information (COI), evidential assessment and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), among others. We have focused on scholarship published in leading journals, including International Journal of Refugee Law and Journal of Refugee Studies. Most of our source material, with a few exceptions, is in English. Notwithstanding these limits, the review reflects a synthesis of key articles, book chapters and monographs, mainly published from 1990 to 2020. We analyse the literature according to the modes of recognition, actors that are involved in recognition and geographic locations where studies are conducted. In the modes of recognition, we explore two strands of literature, the first on individual refugee status determination (RSD) and the second on group recognition.
Refugees’ Access to Work Permits and Business Licences in Kenya
In Kenya, many refugees, in both urban and camp settings, engage in employment and run businesses to cover their basic needs. Kenyan legislation allows refugees to engage in gainful employment and set up businesses: refugees can apply for Class M work permits with Immigration Services and business licences with county authorities to regularise their activities. In practice, access to work permits and business licences is complicated by several barriers. This study explores the gaps that exist between policy and practice of refugee access to Class M work permits and business licences in Kenya, and identifies what support is needed to improve access to sustainable livelihoods for urban and camp refugees.