Forced Migration Online: Blog

In a new report entitled ‘Unlock the Camps in Sri Lanka’ Amnesty International has urged Sri Lanka’s government to set free hundreds of thousands of Tamil war refugees currently detained in camps. The report is a wide-ranging critique of the conditions in which some 300,000 Tamils are now living and includes testimony from refugees now abroad, or their relatives.

• Amnesty International
• BBC News ‘Colombo ‘must free’ war refugees’
• Sri Lanka Ministry of Disaster Management & Human Rights

Talk Together 2009, an ambitious conflict resolution project taking place in Oxford August 5-19, will examine the situation facing an estimated 170,000 people living in refugee camps in Algeria and separated from their families in the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Participants include young people from across the conflict zone, some of whom have grown up in refugee camps, as well as students from ‘neutral’ countries. The project is supported by partners including the European Commission, British Council and United World College. The project course will be filmed and there are also plans to develop a school’s version of the film to aid the learning of conflict resolution skills in schools. Talk Together invite you to demonstrate your support by joining their Facebook group or following them on Twitter.

• Amnesty International Public Statement
• TalkTogether website
• Talk Together Blog
• Talk Together on Twitter
• Talk Together on Facebook
• Donate to Talk Together
• United World Colleges website
• Western Sahara Research Guide
• Western Sahara Research Summary

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

This is a post about the new Spanish language version of ‘Guatemalan forced migration: The politics of care in representing refugees’

La exhibición fotográfica “Migración Forzada de Guatemaltecos: Las políticas de caridad en la representación de refugiados” explora los mecanismos de representación usados para migrantes forzados, mostrando identidades apropiadas de refugiados para justificar la necesidad de apoyo humanitario. La exhibición responde a estos cuestionamientos a través de un trabajo documental con fotografías de migrantes forzados indígenas procedentes de Guatemala, viviendo en el asentamiento de La Gloria, anteriormente un campamento de refugiados, en el estado de Chiapas en México. El proyecto es una colaboración entre el fotógrafo, Manuel Gil, y Candidato a Doctor en Sociología, Óscar F. Gil-García.

Las fotos y descripciones están disponibles para ver en La Revista Migraciones Forzadas. Las fotos son acompañadas por una entrevista (podcast) en donde Óscar F. Gil-García es entrevistado sobre su trabajo en el proyecto.

• Fotos y descripciones
• Podcast (en ingles)

The photographic exhibition Guatemalan forced migration: the politics of care in representing refugees explores the mechanisms of representation used for forced migrants that stage appropriate refugee identities to justify the need for humanitarian care. The exhibition explores these issues through photo-documentary work with indigenous Guatemalan forced migrants living in the former refugee camp of La Gloria in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. The project is a collaboration between photographer, Manuel Gil, and doctoral research student in Sociology, Oscar F. Gil-García.

The photos and descriptions are now available to view on Forced Migration Online. The photos are complemented with a podcast in which Oscar F. Gil-García is interviewed about his work on the project.

• Photos and descriptions
• Podcast