Forced Migration Online: Blog

The film Playing Between Elephants is now available to view online. The film was produced by Aryo Danusiri, Bruno Dercon and UN-HABITAT and has just won the Human Rights Award at the Jakarta International Film Festival 2007. It documents a post-tsunami and post-conflict Aceh, where an international body that is assigned to build houses, while an Acehnese village chief leads his people through the ups and downs of the ongoing reconstruction and rehabilitation process. The film very intimately shows how complicated it is to survive a traumatic event and then experience global intervention. Rebuilding a house in post-tsunami Aceh brings into play the whole world and forces the Acehnese people learn to deal with the friction between the global and local realms.

• Playing Between Elephants

To mark International Migrants Day on 18th December 2007, Oxfam Publishing is providing free online access to Oxfam books, journal articles, policy papers and programme learning on migrants and migration.

The resources can be found on the Oxfam
Publishing website.

• Oxfam Publishing: Free resources on Migrants and Migration

In November 2007, the FMO team established a network of advisors for the OARS project, comprised of representatives of higher education (HE) institutions in the UK. Students, researchers and academics from universities and colleges form the backbone of FMO’s user community. It is therefore important to involve them in the FMO portal’s redevelopment and enhancement.

On behalf of the FMO team, the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, Professor Roger Zetter, wrote to academic departments and centres in the UK requesting their input. They were asked to complete a brief questionnaire about their usage and opinions of FMO. This information will be used to inform the team in its work to make the enhancements to FMO through the OARS project.

We would strongly encourage all users of FMO - whether or not they be in the HE sector and/or in the UK – to contribute to the OARS project and assist the team in making the most appropriate changes to FMO to benefit all users. Further details can be found on the OARS project website, and the questionnaire can be completed and submitted online.