2007 UNHCR/NGO Consultations

The annual consultations between UNHCR and NGOs began yesterday and will continue through the 28th. Discussions will focus on a variety of themes, including: partnership and accountability, durable solutions, protection in mixed migration flows, creating safe schools, delivering humanitarian assistance and protection in complex emergencies, and refugee resettlement. The agenda provides more details.

One aim of the consultations is to consider promoting an EXCOM Conclusion on refugee self-reliance. Background documents relating to this session can be retrieved here.

Several side meetings are also taking place; these are described in a separate agenda.

A profile of the NGOs participating in this year's consultations is available for review.

A final report of the meeting will eventually be issued. Reports from previous years' meetings can be accessed via UNHCR's NGO web page.

For more information and a complete overview of events occurring during these three-day consultations, please visit http://www.unhcr.org/ngo-consultations/.

Posted in Publications and Events.

New Pubs. on Asylum Decisions/U.S., Children in Armed Conflict, Good Governance/Africa, IDPs/Sri Lanka & Uganda, Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Asylum Disparities Persist, Regardless of Court Location and Nationality (TRAC, Sept. 2007) [text]

The building blocks of sustainable peace: The views of internally displaced people in Northern Uganda, Oxfam Briefing Paper 106 (Sept. 2007) [text]

Civilians in the way of conflict: Displaced people in Sri Lanka (IDMC, Sept. 2007) [text]

Getting the Policies Right: The Prioritization and Sequencing of Policies in Post-Conflict Countries, by A. R. Timilsina (RAND Dissertation, 2007) [access]

Ibrahim Index of African Governance (Sept. 2007) [access]
- Assessment of governance quality in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict,
A/62/228 (Aug. 2007) [access via UN Pulse]

Posted in Publications.

New Reports on Iraqi Displacement Crisis

Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries: Second Quarter 2007 (UNHCR, Sept. 2007) [text]
- See also the related UNHCR press release entitled, "Almost 20,000 Iraqis seek asylum in industrialized world in first half of 2007" (21 Sept. 2007).

IOM Emergency Needs Assessments: Post Feb. 2006 Displacement in Iraq (15 Sept. 2007) [text]

Meeting the Health Needs of Iraqis Displaced in Neighbouring Countries: Joint Appeal by UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (18 Sept. 2007) [text]

Millions in Flight: The Iraqi Refugee Crisis (Amnesty International, 24 Sept. 2007) [text] [press release]

Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2008: Report to Congress (U.S. State Dept., Sept. 2007) [text]
- Includes figures for and information re. Iraqi refugee admissions and processing.

Posted in Publications.

New Pubs.: Education, Human Trafficking, Indonesia, Peace, Return, Standing Comm., Zambia

Asylum from Trafficking: A Failure of Protection, Immigration Briefings (July 2007, posted by DocuTicker, Sept. 2007) [text]

Country of Return Information (CRI) Project, Country Sheets (Aug. 2007) [access]
- See the Project web site for more info.

Documents from the 19-20 September 2007 Standing Committee Meeting (UNHCR, Sept. 2007) [access]

Dynamics of Conflict and Displacement in Papua, Indonesia: A collection of papers developed in conjunction with a one-day workshop held on the 26th October 2006 at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, RSC Working Paper no. 42 (RSC, Sept. 2007) [text]

New Policy Solutions for Closing Educational Gaps for Immigrant Children (Migration Policy Institute, Sept. 2007) [access]
- Announcement of three new policy papers that focus on education for immigrant children.

"Peace operations: The clash of moral and strategic demands," Enjeux Internationaux, no. 16 (2007) [text]

Rights Here, Rights Now: Recommendations for Protecting Trafficked Children (ECPAT UK & UNICEF UK, Sept. 2007) [text]

Zambia: Analysis of the Gaps in Protection of Refugees (UNHCR, Sept. 2007) [text]

Posted in Publications.

Peace Publications

Following up on my post yesterday about measuring peace trends, some of the data cited in the CDH report came from the School for a Culture of Peace in Barcelona. The specific source referenced is the 2007 Peace Process Yearbook (available in English and Spanish).

Other information resources the School makes available include:
- Semáforo, fortnightly news service;
- Monthly newsletter;
- Barómetro, a quarterly analysis of trends in nine areas: armed conflicts, tensions, peace processes, post-war rehabilitation, humanitarian crises, militarisation and disarmament, human rights, development and gender; and
- Alert, an annual state of the world assessment of the above areas.

Posted in Publications.

New Issues of Disaster Prev. & Mgmt., E&R Studies, EJML, Hom. & Mig., Intl. Mig.

Disaster Prevention and Management, vol. 16, no. 4 (2007) [contents]
- Mix of articles.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 30, no. 5 (2007) [contents]
- Mix of articles.

European Journal of Migration and Law, vol. 9, no. 3 (2007) [contents]
- Mix of articles.

Hommes et Migrations, no. 1266 (mars/avril 2007) [contents, selected full-text]
- Focus is on "Nouvelles figures de l’immigration en France et en Méditerranée."

International Migration, vol. 45, no. 4 (Oct. 2007) [contents]
- Mix of articles.

Posted in Periodicals.

Measuring Trends in Peace, Conflict and Refugee Protection

The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue recently published Charting the Roads to Peace: Facts, Figures and Trends in Conflict Resolution (Sept. 2007), which provides a statistical overview of global peace developments. As the introduction notes, this reflects a growing movement in the use of quantitative data to analyze and interpret trends in conflicts and peace processes.

Mirroring this trend, UNHCR undertook a pilot project to represent the organization's protection activities from a quantitative perspective. The result, Measuring Protection by Numbers (Nov. 2006), "provide[s] valuable indicators of protection gaps, illustrate[s] emerging trends and developments over time, and serve[s] as a measure of the impact of our protection activities."

The U.S. Institute of Peace just convened a panel to discuss "Behind the Numbers: Assessing Indices of Peace, Conflict, and Instability" (17 Sept. 2007). The primary question posed was "Can peace and stability be measured?." The following indices were examined as part of the discussion:
- Failed States Index
- Global Peace Index
- Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger

Posted in Publications and Web Sites/Tools.

Developments in Europe

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) offers a useful weekly round-up of news on developments in Europe, at both the regional and national levels. The service was discontinued temporarily during the summer, but has now resumed operation once again with a September 15 update.

Here are links to some of the reports referenced in the update:

Country Reports (European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 2007) [access]
- Latest reports are highlighted on the CPT's home page; others can be accessed through the CPT database.

Forced to Flee: frequently asked questions about refugees and asylum seekers in Northern Ireland (Refugee Action Group, June 2007) [text]

Forgotten without Reason: Protection of Non-Refugee Stateless Persons in Central Europe (Hungarian Helsinki Committee, June 2007) [text]

Report on Racism and Xenophobia in the Member States of the EU (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, August 2007) [text]

Third Annual Report on Migration and Integration (European Commission, Sept. 2007) [text]

Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain’s Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands (Human Rights Watch, July 2007) [text]

Posted in Publications and Web Sites/Tools.

New Pubs.: Children/Sudan, IDPs/DRC, Mental Health/Sri Lanka, Religious Freedom, Somalis/Kenya

2007 Report on International Religious Freedom (U.S. Dept. of State, Sept. 2007) [text]

"After the Wave: A Pilot Project to Develop Mental Health Services in Ampara District, Sri Lanka Post-Tsunami," Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (Sept. 2007) [text]

Protracted displacement and remittances: The case of Somalis in Eastleigh, Nairobi, New Issues in Refugee Research Paper No. 143 (UNHCR, Aug. 2007) [text]

Real-time evaluation of UNHCR's IDP operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, PDES/2007/02 - RTE 5 (UNHCR, Sept. 2007) [text]

Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict in the Sudan, S/2007/520 (UN Security Council, Aug. 2007) [text]

Posted in Publications.

New Periodical Issues: Archives Focus, FEX, Monday Dev., Women's Asylum News

Archive Focus, vol. 1, no. 1 (Sept. 2007) [text]
- Inaugural issue from the Refugee Archives, UEL.

Field Exchange, no. 31 (Sept. 2007) [text]
- From the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN).

Monday Developments, vol. 25, no. 8 (Aug. 2007) [text]
- From InterAction; focus is on climate change.

Women's Asylum News, no. 69 (Sept./Oct. 2007) [text]
- From the Refugee Women's Resource Project (RWRP).

Posted in Periodicals.

New Pubs.: Burmese Refugees, IDPs/Somalia, Migration, Refugees/Zambia, Returnees/Sudan

Gaining from Migration: Towards a New Mobility System (OECD, Sept. 2007) [text]

Information Services for Refugee Communities in Zambia, Paper presented at 73rd IFLA General Conference (15 Aug. 2007) [text]

Library Services for Displaced People: Activities in Burmese Refugee Camps, Paper presented at 73rd IFLA General Conference (15 Aug. 2007) [text]

The long road home: Opportunities and obstacles to the reintegration of IDPs and refugees returning to Southern Sudan and the Three Areas. Report of Phase I (Humanitarian Policy Group, ODI, Aug. 2007) [text]

Real time evaluation of UNHCR's IDP operation in Somalia, PDES/2007/02 - RTE 4 (Sept. 2007) [text]

Posted in Publications.

New Survey of Palestinian Refugees & IDPs

The 2006-2007 edition of BADIL's Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons was released today. This resource begins with an historical overview of Palestinian displacement, provides facts and figures about the current Palestinian refugee/IDP population and their status, reviews assistance and protection measures, and concludes with a discussion of attempts to find durable solutions for this longstanding displacement crisis. A glossary, statistical tables, and maps are included.

Posted in Publications.

Highlighting New Books

I recently inserted a new feature into the right-hand sidebar of this blog: New Books. The titles are sourced from Amazon.com. The listing is compiled from RSS feeds that I have generated using this tool. Basically, I enter various keywords, create the feeds, and copy and paste them into Google Reader (the application I use to read my RSS feeds). When relevant titles that have recently been published show up as matches to my keywords, I mark them to "share" (a feature in Google Reader) and in turn they display in the "new books" box on my blog.

While the listing is certainly not an exhaustive inventory of all new book titles for a given month, I hope it is a useful mechanism for alerting researchers to some of the work that has been done in their field of interest.

Posted in Web Sites/Tools.

New Pubs. on Civil-Military Guidelines, Economic Opps., EU Asylum, IDPs, Migration Policy

Expert Seminar on Protracted IDP Situations (Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, June 2007; posted August 2007) [text]

Guidelines for Relations between U.S. Armed Forces and Non-Governmental Humanitarian Organizations in Hostile or Potentially Hostile Environments (InterAction, posted August 2007) [text]

On Migration and the Policy Process, Working Paper no. T20 (Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation & Poverty, August 2007) [text]

Rebuilding Lives: Refugee Economic Opportunities in a New Land (Women's Commission, August 2007) [text]

Response to the European Commission’s Green Paper on the Future Common European Asylum System (UNHCR, Sept. 2007) [text]

Posted in Publications.

New Periodical Issues: CSD, DPR, ICRC Review, SDI

Conflict, Security and Development, vol 7, no. 3 (2007) [contents]
- Focus is on disarmament, demobilisation & reintegration (DDR); includes an article on protracted refugee situations.

Development Policy Review, vol. 25, no. 5 (Sept. 2007) [contents, selected full-text]
- Special issue focusing on the "developmental state": "the issue seeks to inform the process of rethinking how more effective and responsive states can be (re)built – and what the role of the international assistance community may be in that process." Note: This issue will be launched at an ODI event in October.

International Review of the Red Cross, no. 865 (2007) [full-text]
- The theme of this issue is "humanitarian actors," with a particular focus on the role of private miliary companies in armed conflict situations.

Security Dialogue, vol. 38, no. 3 (Sept. 2007) [contents]
- Mix of articles.

Posted in Periodicals.

New Publications/Event relating to Displacement in Iraq

"Escape into insecurity: Iraqi refugees find a precarious home in Jordan," National Catholic Reporter (3 August 2007) [text]

The Ongoing Plight of Iraqi Refugees, 10 September 2007 [info.]
- This panel will be hosted by the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC. The speakers are scheduled to discuss their recent mission to the Middle East "to observe the plight of refugees fleeing the conflict in Iraq." A press release regarding the mission was recently issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Security, Displacement and Iraq: A Deadly Combination (Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, August 2007) [text]

UNHCR's Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Iraqi Asylum-Seekers (August 2007) [text]

Update for partners on the situation of children in Iraq (UNICEF, August 2007) [text]


Posted in Publications and Events.