Forced Migration Online: Blog

This podcast was recorded as part of the Oxfam Archive Oral History project.

It features an interview with Maurice Herson, Editor of Forced Migration Review and previously Deputy Humanitarian Director and Head of Humanitarian Programme Advisory Team at Oxfam.

‘Rwanda and the Great Lakes: A Personal View from the Oxfam Archive” is the second of a two-part series. In this recording, Maurice speaks about the Great Lakes emergency and the Rwanda genocide.

The first podcast focused on Maurice’s career in Sudan in the 1980s.

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This podcast was recorded as part of the Oxfam Archive Oral History project.

It features an interview with Maurice Herson, Editor of Forced Migration Review and previously Deputy Humanitarian Director and Head of Humanitarian Programme Advisory Team at Oxfam.

‘Sudan in the 1980s’ is the first of a two-part series. In this recording, Maurice speaks about his career as a Relief Coordinator in Sudan.

The second podcast in this series will be released next week. It will focus on the Great Lakes refugee crisis of the mid-1990s.

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The Forced Migration Discussion List (also known as the FMList) is an email-based community, moderated by staff at Forced Migration Online.

The List provides regular updates on major news, publications and events relating to forced migration.

We have recently printed a new batch of promotional cards (image above) to highlight this service. We would like to thank Cèsar Casellas, who was kind enough to let us use his striking photo of two Saharwi girls in Dakhla refugee camp in the Tindouf region of Algeria.

You can read more about the issues faced by refugees in Algeria in Forced Migration Online’s Algerian Resource Summary. You can also access a collection of photos focusing on the Saharwi people.

For more information about the Forced Migration Discussion List, or to subscribe, please visit Forced Migration Online.

• Cèsar Casellas’ Flickr page
• Forced Migration Discussion List
• Discussion List posting guidelines
• Resource Summary Algeria
• Photographs: Saharawi

Forced Migration Online has recently published a new resource summary, focusing on Angola.

The Republic of Angola is on the west coast of south-central Africa, and has an estimated population of around 13 million people. Wealthy in natural resources, it is now one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, fuelled mainly by its oil production.

Despite this apparent wealth however, the country faces enormous socio-economic problems. These are the product of a 27-year long civil war, which raged from 1975 to 2002 between the governing MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) and UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). At the height of the civil war, it is estimated that over 4 million people were displaced.

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.

• Angola resource summary
• Regional Resource Summaries
• Thematic Resource Summaries

We are pleased to announce that the ‘photo gallery’ section of Forced Migration Online has been re-launched. In addition to enjoying an improved layout when browsing individual albums, users will also be able to search our full database of photographs.

There are now over 600 photographs in the FMO image database, including a new album of photos on the topic of “Self-Settled and Settlement Refugees in Uganda” (© Ayla Bonfiglio, 2008).

Uganda is one of the few countries to allow refugees to either settle themselves within the national population, or to live in a refugee settlement. This collection of photographs was taken during a comparative study on self-reliance among refugees from these two settlement contexts.

If you have a collection of photographs relating to forced migration and are interested in submitting them for inclusion on FMO please visit our submissions page.

• FMO photo gallery
• New album: Self-settled and settlement refugees in Uganda

Hidden Voices: Urban Refugees in Nairobi, Kenya from International Rescue Committee on Vimeo.

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

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.

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The film ‘Gender Against Men‘ is now available to view online. Gender Against Men exposes the hidden world of sexual and gender-based violence against men in the conflicts of the Great Lakes Region. The film demonstrates how male identities are under attack and how rape when used as a weapon of war affects husbands, fathers, brothers and the community. The film is a production of the Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University.

Gender Against Men will also be shown as part of Refugee Studies Centre and Humanitarian Policy Group’s international conference on Protecting People in Conflict & Crisis.

• Gender Against Men
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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