This podcast was recorded in Amman, Jordan in December 2007 with additional interviews recorded in February 2008. The Amman recordings include interviews with a number of Iraqis now living in Jordan from a range of backgrounds and current situations. The podcast includes comments from Rana Sweis UNHCR, Amman and Dana Graber Ladek International Organisation for Migration (IMO), Iraq.
The film ‘3 Years On’ is now available to view online. The film presents the views and experiences of representatives from NGOs working in Aceh on tsunami reconstruction in 2007. By this stage the majority of reconstruction and resettlement of residents of Aceh has taken place or was close to completion. The interviews offer reflections on the completion of this process and problems that still need to be overcome.
The film ‘Forgotten in the Mountains‘ is now available to view online. The film looks at the issue of forced displacement of indigenous Papuans in (West) Papua, Indonesia.
Papuan fears for their future have recently become focused on the issue of migration from the rest of Indonesia into their homeland. Following the failure of special autonomy since 2001 to deliver health, education and infrastructure benefits to Papuan villagers, or even a small measure of indigenous autonomy in key security and political matters, Papuans have come to feel that divide and rule sums up Jakarta’s approach across the board. Jakarta has been busily creating unwanted new regencies and provinces in Papua as well as pouring booming mineral revenues into the region. But this has merely succeeded in creating a few new elite Papuan beneficiaries of Indonesia’s endemic corruption and setting Papuans against Papuans for control of this corruption. More seriously it has been the pretext and occasion for bringing even more potential settlers—both bureaucrats and soldiers—into Papua as new military commands as well as bureaucracies proliferate. The new demographic balance in Papua pits a large minority of settlers—both “old”, officially sponsored transmigrasi ones and ongoing “spontaneous” ones (mostly traders and small bisnis people from eastern Indonesia)—against an almost dwindling Papuan one, beset by discriminatory birth control policies, an unchecked HIV-AIDS pandemic and 45 years of repression and displacement.
The film ‘West Bank Stories‘ is now available to view online. The film presents the views of three Palestinians living in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank. The Dheisheh camp was established in 1949 within the municipal boundaries of Bethlehem on 430 dunums. It has a registered population of 12,045 of which approximately 6,000 are children. The camp’s residents were particularly active during the intifadah. The Israeli authorities built a fence around the camp and a metal turnstile for the main entrance, which were in place for almost eight years to prevent stone throwing at passing Israeli cars on the main Jerusalem-Hebron road. In 1995, the camp came under Palestinian Authority control, and the fence has since been removed.
The film offers tours of a disused Israeli military base, the Dheisheh camp and the Ibdaa (Innovation) cultural centre at Dheisheh which promotes cultural activities including a dance troupe and basketball team.
Attendees at the recent Dispossession and Displacement Conference were able to see a preview of the film as part of the film panel.
The final podcast in the series recorded at the bi-annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) is now available online.
The fifth plenary event began with a commemoration of the Journal of Refugee Studies’ 20th Anniversary by Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond and Richard Black, followed by a review of the conference by IASFM 11 Rapporteur John Nassari. The video review of the event is also available on this blog.
As part of the London International Documentary Film Festival (29th March – 5th April 2008) will be screenings of four films were screened on the topic of forced migration.
October 2000, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Carmen, a young single mother, faces a life-changing catastrophe when her nine-year-old daughter is badly injured in a bus accident.
Unable to pay the hospital bills and for specialized care, Carmen makes the dangerous journey to the US to work illegally, staying for 6 years to raise what she believes will be enough money to support her daughter for life.
But when she returns home to Bolivia she discovers her savings are nowhere near enough. Should she stay with her ailing daughter, or make the perilous journey back to the US for a second time?
A portrait of the human side of the current immigration crisis in America.
Tickets £7/£6 Curzon members
Box office: 0871 703 3991, Renoir Cinema
A group of Ecuadorean immigrants in Madrid. They came to Spain to work, to support their families, but they desperately want to go home.
But if they go to Ecuador to visit their families, they know they will never again be able to get back to Madrid to work.
In the overcrowded housing estates of North Melbourne lives a young African woman, an Oromo, forced to leave her beloved homeland and family in fear of persecution.
Now she is reunited with her daughters, after more than six years enforced separation. The family must adjust to living together again in a new country.
What is a woman willing to do to make a better life for her children? Norma, a Latin American immigrant in Barcelona, struggles with the pain of solitude, forced to live away from her family in order to support them.
Tickets £3.00
Box office: 0207 323 8181, British Museum
For full programme see the LIDF08 website.
Bhutanese Refugees is a new website which is a collaboration between PhotoVoice and the Bhutanese Refugee Support Group, who have both have worked closely with Bhutanese refugees. The website includes audio and video of refugees telling their personal stories.
Situated between the emerging superpowers of India and China, the isolated Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, hailed by some as ‘the last Shangri-La’, has generated one of the highest numbers of refugees in the world in proportion to its population.
Since 1991 over one sixth of Bhutan’s peoples have sought asylum in Nepal, India and other countries around the world.
Afghani Portraits by Sherry Tompalski and Graham Thompson uses “painted portraits, timelapse photography and edited voice tracks” to tell the stories of Afghan refugees now living in Canada.
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 will be have been posted on this blog in the next few weeks.
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.
The film Playing Between Elephants is now available to view online. The film was produced by Aryo Danusiri, Bruno Dercon and UN-HABITAT and has just won the Human Rights Award at the Jakarta International Film Festival 2007. It documents a post-tsunami and post-conflict Aceh, where an international body that is assigned to build houses, while an Acehnese village chief leads his people through the ups and downs of the ongoing reconstruction and rehabilitation process. The film very intimately shows how complicated it is to survive a traumatic event and then experience global intervention. Rebuilding a house in post-tsunami Aceh brings into play the whole world and forces the Acehnese people learn to deal with the friction between the global and local realms.