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.
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.
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.
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.
Martin Bell is interviewed by Andy Brown, Unicef UK. Martin Bell, former BBC war correspondent, is UNICEF UK’s Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies. In this interview he reflects on his visit to Puntland province, Somalia in May 2009 where the greatest concentration of IDPs displaced by the ongoing conflict are located. More than 50 per cent of Somalia’s population is under the age of 18 and Bell describes UNICEF’s work helping conflict affected and displaced children. Security constraints are such that UNICEF is one of the few humanitarian agencies currently operational in Somalia.
This podcast was recorded between September 2002 and October 2007 in Algeria, Switzerland and the UK. The podcast includes comments from Philip Luther, Amnesty International, Christian Viret, BIRDHSO and Sidi Omar, Polisario representative to the UK and Ireland as well as former Sahrawi disappeared Daoud El Khadir and other Sahrawis with family members still missing.
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.
The film ‘Yemen: Refugees crossing the Gulf of Aden‘ is now available to view online. The film reports how thousands of people risk their lives every year to cross the Gulf of Aden to escape from conflict, violence, drought and poverty.
During 2007, almost 30,000 took the dangerous voyage to seek relative safety in Yemen. Due to the escalation of the conflict in Somalia and the food crisis in parts of the Horn of Africa, more and more people are joining the already large refugee and migrant population in Yemen. During the first five months of 2008 over 20,000 arrived, more than double the number of arrivals in the same period last year.
This podcast was recorded at a lecture organised by the Refugee Studies Centre and sponsored by Clifford Chance, the event was held on Wednesday 18th June 2008 at the offices of Clifford Chance, London. Lord Malloch-Brown, Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the UN gave the lecture which was entitled ‘Reputational Hazard: Rescuing Refugees in the Era of Illegal Immigration and Terrorism’.
The fourth plenary event began with poetry readings by Mehmet Yashin and Stephanos Stephanides, followed by a panel discussion ‘The Voices of the Displaced in Forced Migration Research’ chaired by Elzbieta Gozdziak, with Eftihia Voutira, Giorgia Donna, Arild Birkenes and Zachary Lomo as the panelists.
