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.
FMO has launched the first of a series of podcasts recorded at the Protecting People in Conflict & Crisis conference, held by the Refugee Studies Centre (in collaboration with the Humanitarian Policy Group) between 22th and 24th September 2009 at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. The opening address was given by Erika Feller, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, UNHCR. Further details about the conference can be accessed on the event page.
Refugee Week is a UK wide series of events and activities that celebrate the contribution made by refugees to UK life and seek to promote a better understanding of why people become refugees.
Refugee Week takes place every year in June during the same week as World Refugee Day on June 20th. The main focus of Refugee Week activities in 2009 is the Simple Acts Campaign, which is about inspiring people to use small, everyday actions to change perceptions of refugees.
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.
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.
Professor Roger Zetter, Director of the Refugee Studies Centre was among the experts interviewed for the recent BBC World Service programme, The Instant Guide to Refugees.
According to the latest official figures there are some eleven million refugees in the world, almost one in five of them from Afghanistan. This week the Instant Guide looks at the status of the world’s refugees – their rights, where they mostly are and at life in a refugee camp.
The RSC recently added three new titles to its Working Paper Series: ‘Salah Sheeks is a refugee: New insights into primary and subsidiary forms of protection’, ‘UHCR as an Autonomous Organisation: Complex Operations and the Case of Kosovo’ and ‘Family Reunification: A Right for Forced Migrants?’.
The film ‘Iraqis in Egypt: Time is Running Out’ is now available to view online. The documentary looks at the lives of six Iraqi families who have been forced to flee their homes and are now living as refugees in the massive urban sprawl of Cairo. As the years pass by, their situations are becoming increasingly desperate, with little or no rights in their country of first asylum.
The third plenary event included a panel discussion ‘Regions at the Crossroads: Transregional Forced Migration’ chaired by Susan Martin, with presentations by Mark Schlakman, Aicha Belarbi, Jeffrey Crisp and Ahmet Icduygu and Susan Kneebone.
The research guide on Iraq has been updated to reflect rising levels of displacement and other recent developments. Since 2003, UNHCR estimates that at least 2 million Iraqis have left Iraq and a further 1 million have been displaced inside the country. One in eight Iraqis has been forcibly uprooted, and according to UNHCR estimates, some 40,000 to 60,000 are leaving their homes on a monthly basis. There are an estimated 1.4 million Iraqis seeking refuge in Syria and a further 750,000 in Jordan. See also the resource summary which highlights a selection of web-based resources that focus on Iraq.
UPDATE: Also worth noting, the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq have published a series of 6 briefing papers summarizing current issues, trends and lessons learned facing operational humanitarian organisations in Iraq. The papers address the following areas:
