Around two million people are internally displaced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in central Africa, and nearly 500,000 Congolese people are refugees in neighbouring countries. The DRC continues to be plagued by widespread violence and insecurity, which prevent many people from receiving vital assistance.

The photographs in this collection were part of an exhibition, “No Peace of Mind – Stories of Displacement in the DRC”, which was held by the Refugee Studies Centre in December 2010.

• View the photographs

State fragility contributes to forced migration through many channels. In addition, such states offer particular obstacles to the securing of humanitarian assistance and spaces for protection.

• Fragile States Resource Summary

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

Published between 2000 and 2009 by the Humanitarian Policy Group, part of the Overseas Development Institute, these documents focus on topics such as: aid coordination, cooperation with affected governments, security, terrorism, HIV/AIDS and land use .

The Humanitarian Policy Group is dedicated to improving humanitarian policy and practice through a combination of high-quality analysis, dialogue and debate.

• Browse documents from the Humanitarian Policy Group

‘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

This podcast was recorded at the Refugee Studies Centre’s Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture which was on Wednesday 18th November 2009 at the Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford. The Harrell-Bond Lecture is held annually in honour of Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, founding former director of the Centre and of the academic field of refugee studies or forced migration studies. Jan Egeland, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and currently director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs gave the 2009 lecture on the subject of political deals and durable solutions for the displaced.

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

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

FMO has launched the first of a series of podcasts recorded at the bi-annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), held in Nicosia, Cyprus between 28 June and 2 July 2009. The 12th IASFM conference was hosted by the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. The FMO team made audio recordings of the conference’s plenary sessions. The further details about the conference can be accessed on the FMO event page.

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

• Bearing witness: Martin Bell in Somalia

Issue 32 of Forced Migration Review: Statelessness is now available in the digital library (FMR is one of five journals available).

A ‘stateless person’ is someone who is not recognised as a national by any state. They therefore have no nationality or citizenship and are unprotected by national legislation, leaving them vulnerable in ways that most of us never have to consider. This latest issue of FMR includes 22 articles by academic, international and local actors debating the challenges faced by stateless people and the search for appropriate responses and solutions.

The issue also includes 17 articles on other aspects of forced migration, among which are a mini-feature (comprising four articles) on refugee status determination and articles on European migration policies, Colombia, Ecuador, disaster IDPs, Europe-Africa cooperation, trafficking in Iran, cash grants for refugees and reproductive health care in emergencies.

Full Issue

• FMR 2009, No. 32: Statelessness

Individual Articles

• Statelessness: what it is and why it matters
• UNHCR and responses to statelessness
• North Arakan: an open prison for the Rohingya in Burma
• We have no soil under our feet
• Ethiopia-Eritrea: statelessness and state succession
• Am I stateless because I am a nomad?
• Kenyan Nubians: standing up to statelessness
• The Universal Birth Registration campaign
• Contesting discrimination and statelessness in the Dominican Republic
• Advocacy campaigns and policy development
• Reducing de facto statelessness in Nepal
• The end of Bihari statelessness
• Childhood statelessness
• Stateless persons from Thailand in Japan
• Combatting statelessness: a government perspective
• No place to go: statelessness in Israel
• The lost tribes of Arabia
• Nowhere people
• The legal limbo of detention
• Displaced Kosovo Roma and property rights
• Stateless Roma in Macedonia
• Remember the forgotten, protect the unprotected
• Statelessness and the right to citizenship
• Refugee status determination UNHCR and individual refugee status determination
• Refugee status determination: three challenges
• Refugee status determination in southern Africa
• Refugee protection in Turkey
• An institutional gap for disaster IDPs
• Unmet refugee needs: Colombian refugees in Ecuador
• Europe-Africa cooperation in Mali
• Towards an EU-wide regularisation scheme
• Return and re-admission in states’ migration policies
• Iran: migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons
• RAISE: Reproductive health-care provision in emergencies: preventing needless suffering
• UNHCR: On the money
• Brookings-Bern: Internal displacement and peacebuilding in Colombia
• NRC: One last chance for Colombia’s victims
• IDMC: Stateless former farm workers in Zimbabwe
• Letter from the field: The experience of refugees in Oru refugee camp, Nigeria