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Faith and responses to displacement
The role of faith in the humanitarian sector is not easy to measure. Faiths generally advocate welcoming the stranger and there are many organisations and individuals inspired by their faith or religion to provide protection and assistance. Yet it is easier to measure the activities inspired by faith than to measure the difference that having that faith makes, and secularly inspired standards for such activities can appear to be in tension with the faith inspiration. FMR 48 includes 36 articles on ‘Faith’ plus seven ‘general’ articles.
Repatriation through a trust-based lens: refugee-state trust relations on the Thai-Burma border and beyond
This paper puts forward the argument that substantive attention to the phenomenon of ‘trust’ constitutes a surprising missing chapter in contemporary repatriation policy and theory. In particular, the paper highlights the need for repatriation theorists and policy-makers to foreground trust relations between refugees and their states of origin in dominant frameworks. It argues that emphasis on these refugee-state trust relations presents a logical development, both of contemporary theory on the political content of repatriation and of due consideration of the formidable barrier to repatriation posed by refugees’ distrust of their state of origin. The paper puts forward a trust-based lens, suggesting that we recognise repatriation as, at least in part, a process of trust-building between refugee-citizens and their state of origin. This lens is then applied to the possible future repatriation of Karen refugees in the Thai-Burma border camps, drawing directly on the broad framework developed, and also on historical and cultural dimensions of trust specific to this case. The paper concludes that in this context dominant strategies currently undermine prospects for successful refugee-state trust-building, emphasising the need for fundamental political reform of the Burmese state in terms of its ethnic minority political representation if refugee-state trust is to be won.
Ensuring quality education for young refugees from Syria (12-25 years): a mapping exercise (Arabic)
Arabic translation of the original report published in September 2014. The Syrian crisis has uprooted the largest number of refugees in recent history. Half of the refugee population are children and young people forced to flee from home and rebuild their lives not knowing if or when return may be possible. It is clear that the initial emergency relief initiatives for Syria’s refugee crisis must now evolve to develop longer-term strategies. This mapping exercise focuses in on refugee youth education, a crucial yet often overlooked element in Syria’s humanitarian response. This report addresses the educational status of refugees from Syria aged 12–25 years. It determines their needs and maps some of the services provided by various organisations since the beginning of the Syria crisis in 2011, outlining gaps and challenges as well as progress and successful initiatives. In so doing, it is hoped the report may contribute to help key actors, from NGOs to international donors, to improve educational assistance through a better understanding of the needs of refugees.
Humanitarian Innovation: The State of the Art
The humanitarian system faces grave challenges, as record numbers of people are displaced for longer periods by natural disasters and escalating conflicts. At the same time new technologies, partners, and concepts allow humanitarian actors to understand and address problems quickly and effectively. To contend with these growing, and changing, demands, organizations are increasingly exploring the idea of “humanitarian innovation”, which draws upon concepts from the private sector to adapt and improve the humanitarian system. As a sign of its importance, “Transformation through Innovation” will be one of four themes of the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. Humanitarians have used the term “innovation” to refer to the role of technology, products and processes from other sectors, new forms of partnership, and the use of the ideas and coping capacities of crisis-affected people. However, as with many emerging ideas, use of the term in the humanitarian system has lacked conceptual clarity, leading to misuse, overuse, and the risk that it may become hollow rhetoric. A better understanding of the potential and purpose of the innovation cycle and an innovation mindset can bring great benefits to the humanitarian system. This paper sets out to develop a common language and framework as a basis for dialogue, debate, and collaboration. The purpose is not to provide a definitive or comprehensive account but to offer ideas and examples to inspire further discussion. Each section of the paper highlights an aspect of the concept: 1) the rise of humanitarian innovation and the innovation ecosystem; 2) the unique challenges of humanitarian innovation; 3) the innovation cycle in practice; 4) the role of crisis-affected people; and 5) advancing the debate.
New approaches, alternative avenues and means of access to asylum procedures for persons seeking international protection
Upon request by the LIBE committee, this study examines the workings of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), in order to assess the need and potential for new approaches to ensure access to protection for people seeking it in the EU, including joint processing and distribution of asylum seekers. Rather than advocating the addition of further complexity and coercion to the CEAS, the study proposes a focus on front-line reception and streamlined refugee status determination, in order to mitigate the asylum challenges facing Member States, and guarantee the rights of asylum seekers and refugees according to the EU acquis and international legal standards.
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.
Ensuring quality education for young refugees from Syria (12–25 years): a mapping exercise
The Syrian crisis has uprooted the largest number of refugees in recent history. Half of the refugee population are children and young people forced to flee from home and rebuild their lives not knowing if or when return may be possible. It is clear that the initial emergency relief initiatives for Syria’s refugee crisis must now evolve to develop longer-term strategies. This mapping exercise focuses in on refugee youth education, a crucial yet often overlooked element in Syria’s humanitarian response. This report addresses the educational status of refugees from Syria aged 12–25 years. It determines their needs and maps some of the services provided by various organisations since the beginning of the Syria crisis in 2011, outlining gaps and challenges as well as progress and successful initiatives. In so doing, it is hoped the report may contribute to help key actors, from NGOs to international donors, to improve educational assistance through a better understanding of the needs of refugees.
Introduction: refugees and innovation
Doing innovation well presents challenges for how we can work better together as organisations and with displaced people, and how we can break down traditional barriers between actors – all while upholding ethical principles and protection standards relating to displacement. Innovation is not the same thing as invention; it need not involve the creation of something novel but often takes the form of adapting something to a different context. It may be incremental (step by step) or disruptive (breaking the mould). It may relate to change in a product, a process or a paradigm. And it may involve technology or it may not. The innovation cycle can be thought of as a four-stage process, although the stages do not need to be linear: 1) defining a problem or identifying an opportunity; 2) finding potential solutions; 3) testing, adapting and implementing a solution; and 4) appropriate scaling up of the solution. The term ‘innovation’ is often poorly understood in humanitarian circles or is viewed sceptically as a buzzword brought in from the private sector. It is often used broadly as an umbrella term to cover the roles of technology, partnership and business. However, more precisely, it can be understood generally as a process for adaptation and improvement.
The end of refugee life?
Refugees are people who were forced to flee from their country of origin due to potential or imminent threats to their physical safety, security, liberty, or dignity. These displaced people seek international protection and are rendered refugee status to stay in exile because they are unable or unwilling to return to their home country due to such threats. Their refugee status, however, is not permanently granted. According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, when the circumstances under which they were recognized as refugees no longer exist, the “cessation clause” of the refugee status is invoked by the international refugee regime. For example, the cessation clause has been invoked for refugees from Angola, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda in recent years. Nevertheless, little is known about what actually happens to refugees and how they respond when their refugee status comes to an end.
Innovation and refugees (supplement)
Innovation around displacement is not new. Yet the imperfections of current approaches are obvious in the challenges that we continue to face. By looking at old problems in new ways and by seeking and fostering innovation itself, new products can be developed, new ways of working can be devised and new modalities and paradigms can emerge to make the lives of displaced people better, more sustainable and less risky. These 11 articles reflect some of the thinking behind humanitarian innovation for displaced people, and some of its current manifestations.
Survival migration: a new protection framework
Book description: Refugee law is both conceived as a response to the absence of human rights, and is one of the most powerful means by which human rights are restored. This comprehensive collection of leading scholarship examines the strengths of, and challenges faced by, international refugee law over its nearly century-long existence. Following an original introduction by Professor Hathaway, Volume I addresses the questions of the political and ethical reasons that states have agreed to implement refugee protection in international law; the conceptual boundaries of refugee status; and the systems and structures by which refugee rights are implemented. Volume II takes up the nature of contemporary challenges to the refugee law regime, and examines leading proposals to revitalize and reform international refugee law in order to sustain its vitality in modern circumstances. This topical volume will be of great interest to researchers and scholars in both law and related fields, as well as to lawyers and other practitioners working on asylum and related human rights issues.
Liberal democratic states and responsibilities to refugees
Book description: Refugee law is both conceived as a response to the absence of human rights, and is one of the most powerful means by which human rights are restored. This comprehensive collection of leading scholarship examines the strengths of, and challenges faced by, international refugee law over its nearly century-long existence. Following an original introduction by Professor Hathaway, Volume I addresses the questions of the political and ethical reasons that states have agreed to implement refugee protection in international law; the conceptual boundaries of refugee status; and the systems and structures by which refugee rights are implemented. Volume II takes up the nature of contemporary challenges to the refugee law regime, and examines leading proposals to revitalize and reform international refugee law in order to sustain its vitality in modern circumstances. This topical volume will be of great interest to researchers and scholars in both law and related fields, as well as to lawyers and other practitioners working on asylum and related human rights issues.
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.
The Syria crisis, displacement and protection
The 6.45 million displaced people inside Syria make this the largest IDP crisis in the world, with possibly also the largest number of people who are ‘trapped’. In addition, the number of refugees from Syria continues to increase. The international community has an opportunity to set up, from now, an effective response to what will clearly become protracted displacement. These 20 articles discuss how to increase protection for the displaced and how to shape assistance to both the displaced and their ‘hosts’.
Commentary: The European Union and global migration governance
Book description: The third edition of this major work provides a systematic, comparative assessment of the efforts of a selection of major countries, including the U.S., to deal with immigration and immigrant issues— paying particular attention to the ever-widening gap between their migration policy goals and outcomes. Retaining its comprehensive coverage of nations built by immigrants and those with a more recent history of immigration, the new edition pays particular attention to the tensions created by post-colonial immigration, and explores how countries have attempted to control the entry and employment of legal and illegal Third World immigrants, how they cope with the social and economic integration of these new waves of immigrants, and how they deal with forced migration.
Commentary: The UK and immigration policy
Book description: The third edition of this major work provides a systematic, comparative assessment of the efforts of a selection of major countries, including the U.S., to deal with immigration and immigrant issues— paying particular attention to the ever-widening gap between their migration policy goals and outcomes. Retaining its comprehensive coverage of nations built by immigrants and those with a more recent history of immigration, the new edition pays particular attention to the tensions created by post-colonial immigration, and explores how countries have attempted to control the entry and employment of legal and illegal Third World immigrants, how they cope with the social and economic integration of these new waves of immigrants, and how they deal with forced migration.
The global governance of crisis migration
Book description: Migration is often seen as part of a crisis: a consequence of crisis or a cause of crisis. This book provides fresh perspectives on this routine association. It examines commonly reported examples of ‘crisis-induced migration’ and ‘migration-induced crises’, critically exploring how contemporary migration analysis and policy-making deploy the concept of crisis. In doing so, the book also explores the roles that various forms and levels of governance play in producing, responding to, and sometimes re-producing these crises of migration. Three over-arching questions are explored: What is the nature of the association between migration and crisis? Who responds and how? What do commonly reported ‘crises of migration’ reveal about wider politics and more general migration processes? These questions are posed in relation to a diverse range of crises, themes and contexts at the heart of global policy debates: the global economic crisis, the political transformations of the Arab Spring, famine and conflict in the Horn of Africa, criminal violence in Latin America, xenophobic riots in South Africa, and mass exoduses and border closures. It also explores how crisis frames our understanding of the impact of migration on family life, and immigration policy development in ‘fortress’ Europe. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the role of policy-makers in anticipating and responding to crises, asking what can they learn from these situations and analyses.
The normative institutionalization–implementation gap
Book description: A significant amount of International Relations scholarship examines the role of international norms in world politics. Existing work, though, focuses mainly on how these norms emerge and the process by which governments sign and ratify them. In conventional accounts, the story ends there. Yet, this tells us very little about the conditions under which these norms actually make any difference in practice. When do these norms actually change what happens on the ground? In order to address this analytical gap, the book develops an original conceptual framework for understanding the role of implementation in world politics. It applies this framework to explain variation in the impact of a range of people-centred norms relating to humanitarianism, human rights, and development. The book explores how the same international norms can have radically different effects in different national and local contexts, or within particular organizations, and in turn how this variation can have profound effects on people's lives. How do international norms change and adapt at implementation? Which actors and structures matter for shaping whether implementation actually takes place, and on whose terms? And what lessons can we derive from this for both International Relations theory and for international public policy-makers? Collectively, the chapters explore these themes by looking at three different types of norms - treaty norms, principle norms, and policy norms - across policy fields that include refugees, internal displacement, crimes against humanity, the use of mercenaries, humanitarian assistance, aid transparency, civilian protection, and the responsibility to protect.
From persecution to deprivation: how refugee norms adapt at implementation
Book description: A significant amount of International Relations scholarship examines the role of international norms in world politics. Existing work, though, focuses mainly on how these norms emerge and the process by which governments sign and ratify them. In conventional accounts, the story ends there. Yet, this tells us very little about the conditions under which these norms actually make any difference in practice. When do these norms actually change what happens on the ground? In order to address this analytical gap, the book develops an original conceptual framework for understanding the role of implementation in world politics. It applies this framework to explain variation in the impact of a range of people-centred norms relating to humanitarianism, human rights, and development. The book explores how the same international norms can have radically different effects in different national and local contexts, or within particular organizations, and in turn how this variation can have profound effects on people's lives. How do international norms change and adapt at implementation? Which actors and structures matter for shaping whether implementation actually takes place, and on whose terms? And what lessons can we derive from this for both International Relations theory and for international public policy-makers? Collectively, the chapters explore these themes by looking at three different types of norms - treaty norms, principle norms, and policy norms - across policy fields that include refugees, internal displacement, crimes against humanity, the use of mercenaries, humanitarian assistance, aid transparency, civilian protection, and the responsibility to protect.