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 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

• 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

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

Human Security and Non-Citizens: Law, Policy and International Affairs is a new co-edited collection by Carla Ferstman, Director of REDRESS and Dr. Alice Edwards of the Refugee Studies Centre. The official launch will be on 24th February 2010 as part of RSC’s Wednesday Seminar series.

The past decades have seen enormous changes in our perceptions of ‘security’, the causes of insecurity and the measures adopted to address them. Threats of terrorism and the impacts of globalisation and mass migration have shaped our identities, politics and world views. This volume of essays analyses these shifts in thinking and, in particular, critically engages with the concept of ‘human security’ from legal, international relations and human rights perspectives. Contributors consider the special circumstances of non-citizens, such as refugees, migrants, and displaced and stateless persons, and assess whether, conceptually and practically, ‘human security’ helps to address the multiple challenges they face.

• Human Security and Non-Citizens

‘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

Two new resource summaries are now available on Forced Migration Online. The summaries on ‘Islam, Human Rights and Displacement’ and ‘Statelessness’ complement the 2009 Special Issue and Issue 32 of Forced Migration Review and provide links to related key resources, websites and documents.

• Islam, Human Rights and Displacement
• Statelessness

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

A Podcast of the Oxford event is now online.

The first of its kind, this book provides a rare and unique inside look into the hidden world of ordinary North Koreans. Mike Kim, who worked with refugees on the Chinese border for four years, recounts their experiences of enduring famine, sex-trafficking, and torture, as well as the inspirational stories of those who overcame tremendous adversity to escape the repressive regime of their homeland and make new lives.

In Escaping North Korea, One of the few Americans granted entry into the secretive “Hermit Kingdom,” Kim came to know the isolated country and its people intimately. His North Korean friends entrusted their secrets to him as they revealed the government’s brainwashing tactics and confessed their true thoughts about the repressive regime that so rigidly controls their lives. Civilians and soldiers alike spoke of what North Koreans think of Americans and war with America. Children remembered the suffering they endured through the famine. Women and girls recalled their horrific sex-trafficking experiences. Former political prisoners shared their memories of beatings, torture, and executions in the gulags.

Oxford
10th March 2009, 7.30pm – 9.00pm
Nissan Lecture Theatre
St Antony’s College
University of Oxford
Organised in association with the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford Department of International Development

London
11th March 2009, 7.00pm – 9.00pm
Room G50
The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
Organised in association with the SOAS Amnesty Group

• Oxford event on Forced Migration Online
• Oxford event flyer (PDF file)
• London event flyer (PDF file)
• Podcast (Oxford event)
• Subscribe via iTunes

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