A service highlighting open access reports & scholarly materials relating to refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and other forced migrants; provided by Elisa Mason
The 30 Nov. 2005 report is entitled "On the Margins - Ukraine: Rights Violations Against Migrants and Asylum Seekers at the New Eastern Border of the European Union." Read the summary and link to the full-text report at http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/30/ukrain12097.htm.
Posted in Publications.
Locating research on forced migration issues from academic institutes and think tanks is an ad-hoc exercise. These information products are not always catalogued or indexed in library collections, thereby making them more difficult to monitor than journals or more mainstream publications. Unfortunately, several forced migration-specific endeavors to comprehensively survey ongoing research programs and projects ended up being discontinued after a couple of years (e.g., UNHCR’s Refugee Research Network (REFLINK), the ICAR/UNHCR Postgraduate Network, the European Migration Information Network’s Research Directory, among others).
Directories for identifying relevant institutes are more prevalent than actual listings of current research projects and products. But these are also quite difficult to maintain over time. ReliefWeb offers a directory of organizations that can be filtered by organization type; selecting “academic & research institutions” provides a fairly lengthy listing. Once an individual organization is selected, the user is presented with a profile of products from the organization that reside elsewhere on ReliefWeb’s site - helpful but invariably incomplete. A complementary resource is FMO’s organizations directory; while it allows filtering by country and organization type, its profiles only provide a web address and contact details. The IDP Research Network has produced a database with information on researchers, projects, and publications. However, results from a recent search suggest that the information is not very current.
Another type of resource: ID21 is a development research reporting service that summarizes recent research produced by the UK research community. It includes a “conflict and emergencies” and a “human rights” sub-heading under the “Global Issues” category, where the following titles are described:
- Can river communities benefit from resettlement? by Thayer Scudder
- Exploring the causes of armed conflict in Africa, by Chris Huggins et al.
- Poverty reduction in difficult environments: learning from humanitarian NGOs, by Charlotte Laurence
At this time, no similar resource is available for forced migration generally. Once upon a time, the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) published The Directory of Current Research on Refugees and Other Forced Migrants, but only one or perhaps a few editions were ever issued. This would be a worthy project to re-initiate.
One objective of this blog is to track down and report on recent research papers. To this end, I used ReliefWeb’s and FMO’s directories to identify around 20 research institutes in Europe, North America and Africa that regularly publish working papers. Some examples of recent titles include:
- Entrenched relations and the permanence of long-term refugee camp situations, Sussex Migration Working Paper, no. 28 (2005), by Rebecca Napier-Moore
- Evidence on Attitudes to Asylum and Immigration: What We Know, Don't Know and Need to Know, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society Working Paper, no. 23 (2005), by Heaven Crawley
- ‘There are no Refugees in this Area’: Self-Settled Refugees in Koboko, Refugee Law Project Working Paper, no. 18 (Nov. 2005), by Moses Chrispus Okello et al.
Posted in Publications.
Here are several recent citations to forced migration research reported in the journal literature:
Bagaric, Mirko and James McConvill, “Refugee Law: The Irrelevance of the Framers' Intentions,” Nottingham Law Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 2005, pp. 1-18.
Bash, Leslie, "Identity, boundary and schooling: perspectives on the experiences and perceptions of refugee children,” Intercultural Education, vol. 16, no. 4, October 2005, pp. 351-366.
Briskman, Linda and Sarah Cemlyn, “Reclaiming humanity for asylum-seekers: A social work response,” International Social Work, vol. 48, no. 6, Nov. 2005, pp. 714-724.
Grove, Natalie J. and Anthony B. Zwi, “Our health and theirs: forced migration, othering, and public health,” Social Science and Medicine (article in press).
Moore, Will H. and Stephen M. Shellman, “Refugee or Internally Displaced Person? To Where Should One Flee?” Comparative Political Studies, vol. 39, August 2006 (forthcoming).
Procter, Nicholas G, “'They first killed his heart (then) he took his own life'. Part 1: A review of the context and literature on mental health issues for refugees and asylum seekers,” International Journal of Nursing Practice, vol. 11, no. 6, Dec. 2005, pp. 286-91.
Welch, Michael and Liza Schuster, "Detention of asylum seekers in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy: A critical view of the globalizing culture of control," Criminal Justice, vol. 5, no. 4, Nov. 2005, pp. 331-355.
Also, this issue of Social Policy and Administration (vol. 39, no. 6, December 2005) focuses on asylum and immigration matters.
Posted in Publications and Periodicals.
Protecting Two Million Internally Displaced: The Successes and Shortcomings of the African Union in Darfur (Nov. 2005), from the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement - http://www.brookings.edu/comm/news/200511_au_darfur.htm
- The URL links to a press release describing the report. At the time of this writing, only the hyperlink on the title of the report in the body of the press release was actually functioning; the link to "complete report" was not working.
The EU/AU Partnership in Darfur: Not Yet a Winning Combination (Oct. 2005), from the International Crisis Group - http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3766&l=1
Posted in Publications.African Journal on Conflict Resolution, vol. 5, no. 1 (2005) - http://www.accord.org.za/ajcr/2005-1.htm (full-text)
Australian Journal of Emergency Management, vol. 20, no. 3 (Aug. 2005) - http://www.ema.gov.au/ema/emaInternet.nsf/HeadingPagesDisplay/AJEM?OpenDocument#current (full-text)
CrisisWatch, no. 27 (Nov. 2005) - http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3773 (full-text)
- Monitors ongoing conflict situations and comments on their improvement/decline.
Disasters, vol. 29, no. 4 (Nov. 2005) - http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/disa/29/4 (table of contents, abstracts)
- Includes several articles discussing the value of the Code of Conduct.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 28, no. 6 (Nov. 2005) – http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/openurl.asp?genre=issue&issn=0141-9870&volume=28&issue=6 (table of contents, abstracts)
- Focus is on the children of immigrants.
Human Rights Brief, vol. 12, no. 3 (Spring 2005) - http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/12/123.pdf?rd=1 (full-text)
- Note: The PDF for this issue takes quite a long time to download!
International Migration, vol. 43, no. 4 (Oct. 2005) - http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/imig/43/4 (table of contents, abstracts)
- Includes special cluster on human trafficking.
Nutrition Information in Crisis Situations, vol. 7 (Aug. 2005) - http://www.unsystem.org/scn/Publications/html/rnis.html (full-text)
Arthur C. Helton Fellowship Program - http://www.asil.org/aboutasil/heltonindex.html
- In honor of Arthur Helton, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) established a program to award small grants to “to law students and young professionals for the pursuit of fieldwork and research on significant issues involving international law, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and related areas.” Applications for 2006 fellowships are due by 15 February 2006. Visit the a/m URL for more information and an online application.
Posted in Events.
Global Migration Perspectives (Oct. 2005) - http://www.gcim.org/en/ir_gmp.html
- Six new papers have been added to the series.
Migration in an interconnected world: New directions for action (Oct. 2005) - http://www.gcim.org/en/finalreport.html
- A “comprehensive overview of international migration issues, accompanied by a set of six principles for action and 33 recommendations”; download individual chapters or the complete report.
Newsletter of the Global Migration and Gender Network (Oct. 2005) - http://gender.gcim.org/newsletter/
- This issue includes links to articles and web sites focusing on gender, migration and HIV/AIDS, and a useful list of information resources relating to various aspects of gender and migration.
Posted in Publications.
Working with the Media: A Guide for Anti-Racist Campaigners and Refugee Rights Activists (Oct. 2005) - http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/media_guidance.pdf
- From the Institute for Race Relations, London.
World Press Freedom Index 2005 - http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554
- Ranks 167 countries; provides overview and regional surveys.
Posted in Publications.
While certain UN documents can be accessed from certain UN sites at certain times, a more comprehensive source is the Official Document System (ODS). It’s available via the following links:
New York ODS site - http://www.ods.un.org/
Geneva ODS site - http://www.ods.unog.ch/
The database does not yet include all UN documents, but coverage is expanding. It’s particularly helpful for current documents, and for documents required in languages other than English. Most documents are available in the six official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Refer to the Help page for more information about coverage and searching (http://documents.un.org/help_E.htm).
The database is available for public use. Conference Room Papers (CRPs) and Working Papers are available to staff with a login and password.
Another source for current UN documents is the Dag Hammarskjöld Library’s UN Pulse blog, available at http://unhq-appspub-01.un.org/lib/dhlrefweblog.nsf/dx/about.htm.
Several recent UN documents of interest to readers include:
Report of the Representative of the Secretary-General on the human rights of internally displaced persons, A/60/338 (Sept. 2005) - http://www.brookings.edu/fp/projects/idp/RSG-GA_report.pdf or http://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/482/79/pdf/N0548279.pdf?OpenElement
- First report of the IDP Representative to the General Assembly; presented on 28 Oct. 2005.
Report of the Secretary-General on women and peace and security, S/2005/636 (Oct. 2005) - http://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/534/82/pdf/N0553482.pdf?OpenElement
- Contains Annex entitled “System-wide action plan for the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000)”.
Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, A/60/12(SUPP) (2005) - http://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/540/26/pdf/N0554026.pdf?OpenElement
- UNHCR’s statute stipulates that it will follow policy directives issued by the General Assembly. The organization reports annually on its work, accordingly.
Statement by the President of the Security Council [on “Women and peace and security”], S/PRST/2005/52 (Oct. 2005) - http://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/575/55/pdf/N0557555.pdf?OpenElement
Note: If you experience any difficulties following these links, you can always retrieve the document in question by going to the ODS simple search page, and searching on the document symbol.
Posted in Publications.