This podcast was recorded at an Astor Visiting Fellow Lecture, held on Tuesday 25th January 2011 at The Taylor Institute in Oxford.

Sondra Hale, Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, (UCLA)spoke on the subject of “Gendered Violence and the Politics of Memory in Sudan’s Conflict Zones“.

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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.

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Sahrawi boys playing football outside the precinct of the 27 February Women's School (2007). © 2007 Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

A new collection of photographs: “The 27 February Camp: Sahrawi refugees in Algeria” is now available on Forced Migration Online.

Approximately 155,000 Sahrawi refugees are currently distributed amongst four major refugee camps in South-Western Algeria, named after the main cities in the Western Sahara (Aaiun, Ausserd, Smara and Dakhla).

A fifth camp, the ’27 February Camp’, is relatively small, having grown up around the National Women’s School. This collection of photographs focuses on life in the 27 February Camp.

The photographs in this collection were kindly provided by Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Elena carried out fieldwork in the 27 February Camp between 2001 and 2009.

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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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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 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

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

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 is a video produced by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and MediaServe International. The short film highlights the daily struggles facing thousands of urban refugees living in the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi. In their own words, the refugees tell of how they face poverty, harassment and violence as they make their way in the urban environment.

The video illustrates the many issues highlighted in a IRC new report – Hidden and Exposed: Urban Refugees in Nairobi, Kenya.

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

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