Forced Migration Online: Blog

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

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

The Refugees Studies Centre at Oxford University has recently published a strategic overview of current policy trends and future directions in the forced migration field. The following seven interconnected themes were identified as being of key research interest and of immediate and future relevance to policymakers:

• state fragility and forced migration;
• the economics of forced migration;
• environmental displacement;
• displaced groups with specific needs;
• durable solutions;
• humanitarian space and spaces of protection;
• realising protection: legal and institutional challenges.

The document also identifies areas likely to demand attention in the future.

Prepared by Dr Katy Long, a researcher at the RSC, the document also benefited from inputs by senior RSC staff and researchers and some external policy partners of the RSC.

It is hoped that this overview will be instrumental in informing the research agenda, policy priorities and institutional practices of the wider academic community and policy stakeholders, helping improve international humanitarian action and conflict prevention, and addressing the rights and needs of forced migrants.

The RSC would welcome receiving your feedback on the relevance and usefulness of this document. We also encourage you to contact the RSC should you wish to discuss a specific topic further, share information on a particular area, or support our research. Kindly direct your feedback or queries to the RSC’s Policy Programme Officer, Ms Héloïse Ruaudel, at rscpolicy@qeh.ox.ac.uk.

• Forced migration: Current policy trends and future directions

Issue 34 of Forced Migration Review (FMR) is now available in the digital library. This issue focuses on the topic of “Urban Displacement”.

Articles explore the complexity of the challenges faced by those displaced into urban areas and by those seeking to protect and assist them, and argue for the need for a radical rethinking of approaches by the international community.

The issue also includes a spotlight on Haiti and the use of standards to shape response and recovery after the earthquake in January, plus a selection of articles on subjects such as Mauritania, South Africa, Timor-Leste, Colombia, Pakistan, the new Kampala Convention, family separation in the UK, cross-border mobility of Iraqi refugees, and maternal mortality among conflict-affected populations.

FMR is also published in French, Spanish and Arabic.

Forced Migration Online’s latest resource summary, which complements FMR 34, is also available to view online. It provides links to key resources, websites and documents exploring contemporary debate on these issues, as well as links to wider issues concerned with human rights and displacement.

Full Issue

• FMR 2010, No. 34:  Urban Displacement
  

Resource Summary

• Urban Displacement

Individual Articles

• Adapting to urban displacement
• Meeting humanitarian challenges in urban areas
• Protection challenges for persons of concern in urban settings
• Urban displacement and migration in Colombia
• Invisibility of urban IDPs in Europe
• Profiling urban IDPs
• Improving living conditions in Bossaso, Somalia
• The poor and the displaced in Khartoum
• The journey towards social exclusion in Colombia
• Desperate lives: urban refugee women in Malaysia and Egypt
• Urban refugee health: meeting the challenges
• Support systems among urban IDPs in Georgia
• Education and self-reliance in Egypt
• Urban shelter and the limits of humanitarian action
• Refugees and space in urban areas in Malaysia
• Urban IDPs in Uganda: victims of institutional convenience
• Transition, connection and uncertainty: IDPs in Kampala
• Urban Somali refugees in Yemen
• Displacement within the city: Colombia
• The role of municipal authorities
• Surviving in the city
• ATM cash assistance: does it work?
• Cities of Solidarity: local integration in Latin America
• City of Sanctuary – a UK initiative for hospitality
• Hosting ‘the enemy’
• “Legitimate” protection spaces: UNHCR’s 2009 policy
• Using standards to shape response and recovery in Haiti
• Beyond good intentions: implementing the Kampala Convention
• Norwegian Refugee Council: Shade netting: simple design – effective relief
• RAISE Initiative: The blind spot of the Millennium Development Goals
• International Displacement Monitoring Centre: Displacement in urban areas: implications for humanitarian action
• Cross-border mobility of Iraqi refugees
• Non-nationals displaced in South Africa
• Social mobilisation in IDP camps in Pakistan
• Flexible mandate for protection
• IDP camp closure and gender inequality in Timor-Leste
• Family breakdown in Bogotá
• Living death: separation in the UK
• Voluntary repatriation and the participation of Mauritanian refugees

‘Iraq’s refugees – beyond tolerance’ by Dr Philip Marfleet and Dr Dawn Chatty, the latest in the series of Refugee Studies Centre Forced Migration Policy Briefings, is now available online.

This policy brief considers the situation of displaced populations within Iraq’s national borders and of communities of Iraqis living under difficult circumstances in a number of Middle Eastern states.

The paper suggests that despite military and policy discourses of renewed stability in Iraq, the crisis is far from over and that mass return is unlikely as long as security remains a key concern. It presents some key principles for consideration by policy makers in government, in migration agencies and in the humanitarian networks and recommends that further research should be conducted on the scale, circumstances and patterns of movement of Iraqis within and beyond the Middle East.

• Policy brief

Issue 33 of Forced Migration Review: Protracted displacement is now available in the digital library (FMR is one of five journals available).

Increasingly, growing numbers of displaced people remain displaced for years, even decades. This latest issue of FMR includes 29 articles by academic, international and local actors which assess the impact of such situations on people’s lives and our societies and explore the ‘solutions’ – political, humanitarian and personal.

The issue also includes a spotlight on the ‘internment camps’ in Sri Lanka and a mini-feature on Collective centres, plus a selection of articles on other aspects of forced migration such as rights and responsibilities in Darfur, smuggling in South Africa, IDP health needs in Colombia, climate change agreement talks, peace mediation, and community resilience in East Timor.

FMR is also published in French, Spanish and Arabic and the other language editions will follow soon.

A resource summary to complement FMR 33 is now available on Forced Migration Online and provides links to related key resources websites and documents.

Full Issue

• FMR 2009, No. 33: Protracted displacement

Individual Articles

• Sri Lanka: a question of rights
• Protecting housing rights for IDPs in Sri Lanka
• Understanding the challenge
• Doubly forgotten
• Riding on the back of a tortoise
• Listening to the experiences of the long-term displaced
• Crisis and displacement in Somalia
• Addressing core problems
• Repatriation to Afghanistan: durable solution or responsibility shifting?
• Unfinished business: IDPs in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Europe’s IDPs still marginalised
• Darfur: a way of life lost
• Comprehensive solutions: a ‘whole-of-government’ approach
• Daring to dream of an end to exile in sub-Saharan Africa
• Local integration in West Africa
• Durable solutions for Burundian refugees in Tanzania
• Burundi: seven years of refugee return
• Refugees: asset or burden?
• Refugee resources: Sri Lankan Tamils in India
• Displacement shock and recovery in Cyprus
• Local integration for refugees in Serbia
• Displacement, decentralisation and reparation in post-conflict Peru
• Peacebuilding in displacement
• Importance of access to financial services
• Hope and opportunities for young people
• Sudanese refugee youth ‘gangs’ in Cairo
• Activism among a new generation of Palestinian exiles
• Use of housing vouchers in Georgia
• Confidence-building measures in Western Sahara
• Refugees and mobility
• A regime at a loss?
• A missing element of ‘camp management’
• When ‘temporary’ lasts too long
• Rights and responsibilities in Darfur
• South Africa’s smugglers’ borderland
• IDP health in Colombia: needs and challenges
• Towards a humanitarian climate change agreement
• Protracted Muslim displacement in Sri Lanka
• Internal displacement and peace mediation
• Community resilience in rural East Timor

A Forced Migration Review supplement ‘Islam, human rights and displacement’ is now in the digital library (FMR is one of five journals available).

The Forced Migration Review Editors have produced this 12-page supplement to enhance debate and understanding of the concepts and instruments of international human rights in the Islamic world.

The supplement includes the full text of the UDHR and the ‘Cairo Declaration’ in the hope that they will both inform and enable those concerned with assisting and protecting displaced people to advocate more strongly on their behalf. We have also included three articles that take up aspects of the debate over the applicability of international laws and conventions in Islam.

Full Issue

• FMR 2009, Supplement: Islam, human rights and displacement

Individual Articles

• Islam, international law and the protection of refugees and IDPs
• The rights of refugee women and children in Islam
• Child rights and Islam

The Digital Library and Journals sections of this website were relaunched in December 2008, with substantial modifications and upgrades including moving the content to new servers (for better long term preservation) and a more precise search facility. This work was undertaken as part of the JISC funded OARS project, the aim of which was to improve the management of the underlying Digital Library content and make it more open and accessible to external systems such as Google. Searching and browsing Digital Library content is now faster and more accurate than before, and this content is accessed through an improved user interface. The FMO team welcomes feedback from our users.

• Digital Library
• Journals

A special issue of Forced Migration Review ‘Ten Years of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement’ is now in the digital library (FMR is one of five journals available).

This 40-page special issue of Forced Migration Review (FMR), published by the Refugee Studies Centre of Oxford University, reflects discussions at the international conference on the Ten Years of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (‘GP10’) held in Oslo on 16-17 October 2008.

The FMR special issue includes shortened versions of some of the conference presentations, plus a selection of other articles, most of which present case studies on the application of the Guiding Principles in different countries.

Full Issue

• FMR 2008, Special Issue: Ten Years of the Guiding Principles

Individual Articles

• The genesis and the challenges
• Achievements, challenges and recommendations
• Assessing the impact of the Principles: an unfinished task
• The Guiding Principles and the Responsibility to Protect
• Achievements and limitations of the Guiding Principles in Burma
• Protecting IDPs in Europe
• Experience of the Guiding Principles in Georgia
• Africa: from voluntary principles to binding standards
• Can the Guiding Principles make a difference in Kenya?
• Uganda’s response to displacement: contrasting policy and practice
• Guiding Principle 29 and the right to restitution
• Obstacles to realising Guiding Principle 29 in Afghanistan
• Seeking electoral equality for IDP voters
• Time to apply the Guiding Principles in Nepal
• Returnees in Sierra Leone
• Guiding Principle 27 and Philippine typhoon response
• Internal displacement in the Central African Republic
• UNHCR and the Guiding Principles
• Training to strengthen protection of IDP rights
• The future of the Guiding Principles

“On this Human Rights Day, it is my hope that we will all act on our collective responsibility to uphold the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration. We can only honour the towering vision of that inspiring document when its principles are fully applied everywhere, for everyone.”
Ban Ki-moon,
United Nations Secretary-General

For resources and more information about Human Rights Day and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights see the FMO resource summary and the selected digital library documents below.

• Resource summary
• The functioning of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
• Protecting human rights: the challenge to humanitarian organizations
• A humanitarian practitioner’s guide to international human rights law
• Human rights at the dawn of the 21st century
• Human rights and refugees