New Human Rights Watch Report

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.

New FMR Issue on Sudan

Forced Migration Review launched issue 24 today. Its focus is on "Prospects for Peace in Sudan." The issue includes 36 articles from a wide range of contributors, including Francis Deng and Jon Bennett, and is the longest one yet produced in the FMR series.

Several general articles are also included, with discussions on statelessness and gender-based violence, among others.

Posted in Publications.

UNHCR Q&A on IDPs

UNHCR has revised its approach towards internally displaced persons (IDPs) , in light of certain operational changes agreed to within the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. Specifically, "Under the general umbrella of the office of the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, for instance, the refugee agency in future will take a 'lead’ role in overseeing the protection and shelter needs of IDPs as well as the coordination and management of any camps which are established. Other U.N. agencies will adopt similar roles in the areas of water, nutrition, health, logistics and telecommunications."

For more information, read UNHCR's updated Q&A brochure on IDPs.

Background on the discussions that have taken place regarding reforms within the humanitarian community, including IDP assistance, are available in the following:

FMR Supplement, "Protecting and assisting the internally displaced: the way forward" (Oct. 2005)

ICVA Newsletter, "Special Issue on Humanitarian Reforms," vol. 7, no. 3 (Oct. 2005)

Posted in Publications.

Finding Out about Research: Academic/Research Institutes

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.

Sphere Project Seeks New Board Members

If you are interested in helping to govern the Sphere Project, apply for board membership using the materials available at http://www.sphereproject.org/about/newboard.htm.

Posted in Events & Opportunities.

Darfur: Analysis of AU Role

Eric Reeves, professor at Smith College, recently posted a two-part analysis of the African Union's role in Darfur on his web site.

- Part 1: Ghosts of Rwanda: The Failure of the African Union in Darfur, November 13, 2005
- Part 2: Ghosts of Rwanda: The Failure of the African Union in Darfur, November 20, 2005

His article references the ICG and Brookings reports on the AU in Darfur that were highlighted in an earlier blog posting, as well as a Refugees International report.

Eric Reeves is also the author of the Sudan entry in the 2005 encyclopedia, Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present.

Posted in Publications.

Food Insecurity Report

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005 has just been published. It's available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese. The report examines the extent to which developing areas are on track to meet Millennium Development Goals of significant hunger and poverty reduction.

Posted in Publications.

New Issue of Citizenship Studies

The Nov. 2005 issue of the journal Citizenship Studies is now available; read the contents and abstracts here.

Posted in Periodicals.

New Issue of International Migration

International Migration, Volume 43, Number 5, December 2005 -
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/imig/2005/00000043/00000005
- Focus is on immigrant labour.

Posted in Periodicals.

New Print Encyclopedia on Minorities, Related Web Resources

Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities, 3 vols. - http://www.routledge-ny.com/ref/minorities/index.html
- Includes entries for refugees, diaspora, immigration, migrations. Does not appear to cover development-induced displacement, although I have not examined a copy directly.

Other resources:

European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) - http://www.ecmi.de/
- Includes ethnopolitical map of Europe, legal resources, project descriptions, lots of publications.

Minorities (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) -http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/minorities/index.htm
- Includes workshop reports, documents, declaration on minorities.

Minorities at Risk Project (MAR) - http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/
- Includes data sets on ethnic groups, “Peace and Conflict” annual reports, hot spots, and links to other resources.

Minority Rights Group International - http://www.minorityrights.org/
- Includes international instruments, online publications (though listing is not that current), and information on MRG's activities.

Posted in Publications and Web Sites/Tools.

Reach Out Refugee Protection Training Project

The Reach Out Refugee Protection Training Project will be phased out by the end of November 2005. However, its training materials will continue to be accessible via archives on partner web sites. ReliefWeb and UNHCR have already made the Refugee Protection Training Kit available; ICVA is also slated to host the documents.

Posted in Web Sites/Tools and Publications.

Wex: Online Legal Dictionary/Encyclopedia

Like Wikipedia, Wex is a collaborative effort, but with more editorial control. This resource is both a dictionary and an encyclopedia intended for the general public. The editors invite submissions from qualified experts. While there are entries for "human rights" and "immigration," more specific forced migration terms such as asylum, refugees, refoulement, etc., are not currently represented. Anyone interested in contributing?

Posted in Web Sites/Tools.

New Journal Issues: Ethn. & Rac. Stud., Hum. Rts. Q., Comm. Dev. J.

The Jan. 2006 issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies (vol. 29, no. 1) has been published, with several articles examining conceptions of citizenship and nationhood.

Human Rights Quarterly's final issue for 2005 is available (vol. 27, no. 4), with articles on Darfur and economic, social and cultural rights, among others.

And in case anyone missed it, Community Development Journal's April issue focuses on refugees and asylum-seekers.

Posted in Periodicals.

Finding Out about Research: Part Two – Journal Databases

Most of the articles listed in the previous posting were identified using three online journal databases: FindArticles, IngentaConnect and HighWire. All three can be accessed on the web, for free. This is impressive given the size of the databases and the number of periodicals they collect. Each has its own pluses and minuses.

FindArticles offers “millions of articles from leading academic, industry and general interest publications.” Some are available in full-text for free, while others are considered premium content and come with a price tag. Results for general forced migration-related searches (e.g., refugees, internally displaced, asylum, involuntary resettlement, etc.), limited to the most current free content, appear to derive primarily from newspapers and news magazines. Those interested in more scholarly research would need to search the premium content as well. The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Refuge are included in this repository, but access to articles in both require payment of a fee (around $10 for the latter; note that access to the full-text of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and other journals is free if readers sign up for a free trial of the service hosting the text). The advantage of this resource is one can retrieve quite a lot of free full-text; however, it tends to be geared more towards news and opinion, rather than research and analysis.

For more scholarly works, researchers should turn to Ingenta Connect. While this service does not offer any free content, it serves as an excellent resource for identifying current and relevant research. For people who want to keep abreast of the latest developments, a number of helpful features are provided: New content is highlighted in one’s search results, so it is easy to focus in on the most current articles. And RSS feeds are available for every periodical in Ingenta’s collection – another easy way to monitor journal contents. Free registration with the service allows users to save searches and run them again at regular intervals. Registered users can also have the tables of contents for up to five publications e-mailed to them directly. Coverage is quite comprehensive; for example, all the key forced migration journals are included in Ingenta (IJRL, JRS, RSQ, Disasters, International Migration…), except IMR. As noted above, full-text articles/publications must be purchased, and can run anywhere from $10-$40. Per article fees may be less costly if one goes directly to the publisher web site. Alternatively, if you live near a library, check their catalogue to see if they carry the journal in question. The only cost will be for the photocopy machine.

HighWire Press also provides access to scholarly materials, with an emphasis on the sciences. That said, all three “refugee” journals from OUP are included in the HighWire collection. This resource is particularly helpful for researchers interested in health or medical issues relating to refugees and asylum-seekers. Searches can be simultaneously conducted in HighWire and in PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s premier search service. Free full-text articles are clearly marked in one’s search results. Costs for premium articles appear to range from $10 to $35. Users who choose to register with HighWire can benefit from a variety of additional features, including table of contents alerts, favorite journals list, etc.

My focus in this review was on recently published journal articles relating to forced migration issues. These three services compared quite favorably with a number of subscription databases which I also tested out but which are only available in academic libraries. In fact, from the point of view of currency, they proved to be excellent resources for monitoring new journal content.

Posted in Web Sites/Tools.

CERD Report

The Report of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) on its 66th and 67th sessions is now available; the document symbol for the report is A/60/18, Suppl. 18. You can access the report through the UN Library's blog, along with a declaration on the prevention of genocide. More information about CERD, its mandate and activities, can be found on the committee's web page.

Posted in Publications.

Finding Out about Research: Part One - Recent Journal Articles

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.

New Issue of Journal of Refugee Studies

The December 2005 issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies is now available. Contents include:

"Theoretical and Methodological Challenges of Studying Refugee Children in the Middle East and North Africa: Young Palestinian, Afghan and Sahrawi Refugees," by Dawn Chatty, Gina Crivello, and Gillian Lewando Hundt

"Intent to Destroy: The Genocidal Impact of Forced Migration in Darfur, Sudan," by Erin Patrick

"Whose House is this Anyway? IDP and Refugee Return in Post-Saddam Iraq," by David Romano

"Predictors of the Authorities' Decision to Grant Asylum in Denmark," by Edith Montgomery and Anders Foldspang

"Refugees in Russia: the Law on Refugees and its Implementation," by Ahoura Afshar

Ten book reviews are also included.

Back issues of the Journal of Refugee Studies are available on Forced Migration Online here.

Posted in Periodicals.

Two Reports on the AU in Darfur

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.

Recent Issues of Journals/Newsletters

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)

Posted in Periodicals.

New Issue of Development in Practice

The latest issue of Oxfam's Development in Practice has been published. The focus of vol. 15, no. 6 (Nov. 2005) is on peace-building, and included are a review essay and an annotated bibliography on post-war reconstruction. The table of contents and abstracts, plus a full-text editorial are available at http://www.developmentinpractice.org/abstracts/Vol15/15-6/v15n06Contents.htm.

Posted in Periodicals.