Forced Migration Online: Blog

Saturday 26 June is the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. It provides a time to reflect on the past, to honour the victims and survivors of torture and to look to a better future.

Forced Migration Online’s resource page on the subject highlights a number of key online information sources relating to torture, organized under the following headings:

• International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
• International Conventions
• Investigation and Reporting of Torture

It also features a selection of full-text documents, web-based resources, and descriptions of relevant organizations available through FMO that focus on torture-related issues.

This year, the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims also has a useful map of observations taking place around the world.

• UN: International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
• FMO Resource Summary: Torture

Cover of FMR 35: Disability

Issue 35 of Forced Migration Review (FMR) is now available in the FMO digital library. This issue focuses on the topic of “Disability and Displacement”.

The World Health Organisation estimates that persons with disabilities account for 7-10% of the world’s population. This would imply that there are three to four million persons living with disability among the world’s 42 million displaced. It is not (yet) common practice, however, to include people with disabilities among those who are considered as particularly vulnerable in disasters and displacement and who therefore require targeted response.

Forced Migration Online’s latest resource summary, which complements FMR 35, is also available to view online. It provides links to key resources, websites and documents exploring contemporary debate on this issue as well as links to wider issues concerned with human rights and displacement.

Issue 35 of Forced Migration Review also contains a mini-feature on Brazil, as well as articles on: accountability, mobility, reproductive health in Darfur, repatriation decision-making and protection in natural disasters.

• FMR 2010, 2010, No. 35: Disability and Displacement
• FMO Resource summary: Disability

Sunday 20 June is World Refugee Day. First marked in 2001, World Refugee Day is an attempt to get the international community to remember the plight of the world’s millions of refugees.

A series of events and activities in more than 100 countries will seek to promote a better understanding of why people become refugees, and to highlight the challenges involved in trying to help them. These events will involve government officials, humanitarian aid workers, celebrities, civilians and the forcibly displaced themselves.

• UNHCR: World Refugee Day 2010
• Video: High Commissioner António Guterres’ message for World Refugee Day
• Red Cross – Look Beyond the Label
• Simple Acts: learn and do more with refugees
• FMO: resources on World Refugee Day and Refugee Week

Following a successful consultation in 2005, Forced Migration Online will be carrying out a user survey over the summer, in order to determine who is using our resources and for what purposes.

Please take a few minutes to fill in our brief survey about your experiences of the site. Your feedback will help us to better address user needs and will be taken into account when planning any future changes to the site.

The survey will run from 14  June – 31 August 2010. It has 24 questions and should take only 5-10 minutes of your time.

Prize draw: Contributors will be entered into a prize draw, with the chance to win a bundle of books on forced migration issues worth over US$300. Two runners-up will receive a copy of the recently published “Deterritorialized youth: Sahrawi and Afghan refugees at the margins of the Middle East” (Chatty, D. 2010).

To be in with a chance of winning just make sure to fill in the optional name and email address address fields at the beginning of the survey.

• Take the FMO survey

On 26 May Professor Saskia Sassen gave the Refugee Studies Centre’s annual “Elizabeth Colson Lecture”.

Prof. Sassen spoke on the topic of “The complexity of Powerlessness: What makes human rights law perform?”

A podcast of this lecture is now available to listen to on Forced Migration Online.

Prof. Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and a Member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. She spoke about the limits of power and the complexities of powerlessness, using the examples of immigration and human rights to help to explore these abstract issues.

The Elizabeth Colson Lecture is held annually in honour of Professor Elizabeth Colson, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Listen to the podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

Forced Migration Online is pleased to announce the publication of its first newsletter. This issue presents highlights from the new resources added to the FMO website in 2010.

If you would like to receive future FMO newsletters, please subscribe to our mailing list. You can also receive notifications as an RSS feed.

The newsletter has been designed so that it can be easily posted up on notice boards, and would encourage you to print out copies if you think that others in your organization would find Forced Migration Online useful.

In addition to highlighting recent updates, the newsletter gives details of how users can contribute resources to the site. For those of you who are not familiar with Forced Migration Online, there is also a brief outline of the various resources we provide, including:

• Over 5,000 full-text documents, available to download for free
• Thematic and country specific guides to research
• Collections of videos, podcasts and photos
• An updated organizations database
• An email-based discussion list

Links: June 2010 newsletter

• FMO Newsletter
• Subscribe
• RSS feed

Forced Migration Online has recently published a new resource summary, focusing on Algeria.

The summary provides an outline of present and historical causes of forced migration within Algeria. It also gives an overview of Algeria’s relationship to various international refugee conventions and its role as host to several thousand refugees including the Sahrawi, as well as refugees from Palestine and Sub-Saharan Africa.

All our summaries provide links to key resources, websites and documents exploring contemporary debate on on key issues, in forced migration as well as links to wider issues concerned with human rights and displacement. Our full collection of resource summaries, focusing on specific regions and themes, can be accessed from the links below.

• Algeria resource summary
• Regional Resource Summaries
• Thematic Resource Summaries

The Forced Migration Discussion List (also known as the FMList) is an email-based community, moderated by staff at Forced Migration Online. It provides regular updates on major news, publications and events relating to forced migration.

Posts to the Forced Migration Discussion List will often include information about relevant funding opportunities, job vacancies and new research projects. Subscribers to the List also have access to an invaluable community of experts in the field of forced migration, and may occasionally use the List to request specific information on issues relevant to forced migration.

Messages sent to the Forced Migration Discussion List are moderated and so we have recently published a set of posting guidelines to help users who wish to post a message to the List. Users who regularly post messages to the List may wish to take a moment to read through them.

For more information, or to subscribe, please visit the FMList page on Forced Migration Online.

• Forced Migration Discussion List
• Post guidelines