The Palestinian Register provides unique record of contemporary Palestinian civic and political voices. Carried out by Palestinian refugees and exiles and implemented by activists and local leaders, the report of the Civitas collective research project is now available online. This project provides a platform for those Palestinians voices that are rarely heard - the men and women who live in al Shatat (the Palestinian dispersal in 1948 and after). They discuss issues of political representation and the concerns and mechanisms for engagement and renewal. Crucially, they also address the connections that do and do not exist with the PLO and the host countries where they currently live, and with other refugee camps and communities.
Between January 6th and 10th 2008, the 11th International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) conference was hosted by the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program of the American University in Cairo. The Forced Migration Online team attended to participate and record audio at the plenary events for the FMO podcast series. Details of the podcasts have been posted on this blog.
Our conference round-up begins with a video review of the event produced by the IASFM rapporteur John Nassari. The video is a part of the rapporteur’s conference report, along with a more traditional oral report which was delivered in the final plenary session of the conference. The video report features participants reading quotes which were originally spoken by others during the conference.
This podcast was recorded at the Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture which was on Wednesday 21 November 2007 at the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History. In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Refugee Studies Centre, HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan gave the lecture and spoke on the subject of human rights and refugees.
The film Youth as Evaluators: Contested Spaces and Identity is now available to view online. In this documentary, young people talk about their countries and the issues that young people face there. The documentary was filmed during a gathering of young people involved in Public Achievement and similar programmes around the world (including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Finland, Netherlands, and Northern Ireland) at the Corrymeela Centre, Ballycastle, Northern Ireland 11 - 22 August 2005. The focus of the event was on training participants as evaluators of their youth programmes at home, and on creating an international network of young people interested in improving young people’s experience of being civic co-creators.
The countries of the Middle East are now host to the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world. Violence has displaced two million inside Iraq and over two million have crossed its borders. Most refugees are in Syria and Jordan - which host the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on earth. The vast majority are surviving with little or no assistance from the international community. Few, if any, enjoy their rights as refugees.
This special issue of FMR presents 26 articles from governments, UN agencies and civil society examining the extent of the displacement crisis and the search for solutions. The Editors have worked in close consultation with
UNHCR’s Iraq Unit and are grateful for funding support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation, the International Organization for Migration, Islamic Relief Worldwide and the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement.
In this podcast Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond and Prof Roger Zetter discuss the evolution of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) and of the academic field of refugee studies or forced migration studies. As the founding former director of the RSC and the current director respectively, and with a long shared history of collaboration since the centre was established, Harrell-Bond and Zetter are well placed to discuss its early years and the changes it has undergone. In this conversation, they also talk about the current state of refugee protection and the asylum process, and examine the responses of the international community, particularly UNHCR.
This updated research guide provides an overview of the influxes of Palestinian refugees to Lebanon since 1948 and subsequent conflicts in the country. It provides historical background to how the refugees came to be in Lebanon and examines the conditions under which they live. This research guide is one of five examining the situation of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.
