Displaying items by tag: Refugees

From its inception at the Global Conference in Oslo in June 1994, PARinAC – Partnership in Action – has set the tone and agenda for NGO– UNHCR relations. Its defining characteristic is that it has always been as much about the process of cooperation as about the building up of partnership structures; it is not an end in itself but rather a methodology for NGO– UNHCR relations. As a result of increased NGO–UNHCR cooperation there has been a more coherent and comprehensive approach to working with refugees and IDPs. In the autumn of 1998, UNHCR and its NGO partners proposed a review of the structures of PARinAC. How has it developed since…

This is a welcome report; it highlights successes, but also failings and weaknesses. It asks whether Kosovo refugees obtained appropriate protection and assistance, and whether UNHCR met its own standards. It looks at five areas in particular, namely context, including background, preparedness and initial responses; management; assistance and coordination; protection; and relations with the military. This short review touches only a few. Kosovo was not unique, even though no one disputes that the exodus was unusually large and swift – some 500,000 refugees fled within two weeks, rising to a high probably in the region of 850,000. No one disputes, either, that UNHCR was constrained by circumstance. But that aside, all the errors…

On 7 November 2012, the day after the US presidential election, Obama's former Special Assistant for Justice and Regulatory Policy will deliver the Refugee Studies Centre's Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture on 'The architecture of refugee protection' at the Oxford Museum of Natural History. Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar is the Co-Director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and has served in both the Obama and Clinton Administrations and co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition's Immigration Policy Working Group. In his talk, Cuéllar will analyse the planning of refugee camps, the wider humanitarian relief system, and the allocation of power across nation-states. Tens of…

Reconstruction: Food Security, Nutrition and Home Gardens Online Learning Course Begins October 30, 2012 What is Food Security? What is good nutrition? What garden activities show evidence of supporting them? Learn: What works, how to introduce food gardens to communities, how to conduct a baseline survey, and how to implement a 12-month family garden project. For many people living in the cycle of poverty, the idea of starting a kitchen garden might seem overwhelming. It could be the time investment, it might be perceived costs. It might be a lack of know-how: what to plant, how to plant, and how…

As the 18-month uprising in Syria rages on hundreds of thousands of refugees are crossing into neighboring countries of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. While the immediate responses have rightly focused on survival needs such as food, water, and health, education must also be addressed as early as possible. The importance of education in crisis situations is gaining momentum on international agendas, with USAID highlighting it as a goal in the 2011-2015 Education Strategy: “Increased equitable access to education in crisis and conflict environments for 15 million learners by 2015.” More recently, at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in…

The IDP Vulnerability Assessment and Profiling (IVAP) project was launched in Pakistan in 2010 to enable agencies to provide humanitarian assistance in a more impartial and targeted manner. Responding to needs arising out of a protracted conflict, humanitarian agencies in Pakistan’s north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province were preparing to provide aid to hundreds of thousands of conflict IDPs for a third consecutive year. Effective targeting of beneficiaries – particularly in a period when financial resources were steadily decreasing – required humanitarian agencies to locate and identify those directly affected by the conflict, broadly understand their priority needs and then analyse…

The concept of humanitarian space has been the subject of intense debate in recent humanitarian discourse. Dominant still is the argument that this space is contracting, making it more difficult for humanitarian actors to reach crisis-affected civilians. However, this narrative has been increasingly challenged. New research highlights a range of definitional differences and a dearth in empirical evidence to support the ‘shrinking space’ hypothesis.[1] Policy-makers are beginning to lose patience with the term’s vagueness.[2] This article aims to advance the current debate by determining the extent to which this conceptual confusion actually impacts on humanitarian interventions. Is it just academic,…

Poor harvests in 2011, and then armed conflict and violence: people in northern Mali have been hit doubly hard. They are no longer able to meet their basic food needs. The majority of rural households owe their livelihood to farming and livestock activities. They have not had time to recover from the effects of drought, which has reduced their food security in recent years, and they are now suffering from the negative effects of conflict as well. Food is scarce and expensive and people have no income to buy what they need. Their resilience capacity has been severely depleted by…

In the wake of drought in West Africa’s Sahel region, a bleak narrative of an estimated 18.7 million people on the brink of potential catastrophic food crisis has captured media attention. There has been a constant drumbeat of calls from many agencies for more humanitarian funding. Agricultural production in the Sahel fell due to late and irregular rains and prolonged dry spells in 2011. Drought also caused a significant fodder deficit in the pastoral areas of the Sahel. The Food Crisis Prevention Network (RPCA) meeting of 12–13 April confirmed that Sahel cereal production in 2011 was 26% lower than in…

Drought situation improved. Good harvest anticipated in main agricultural areas of Western, Rift Valley and Central Regions. Wholesale prices for maize and beans have eased considerably and in mid-August the Government announced a suspension of the commercial imports of wheat and maize. Districts in the southern part of Eastern Province and the arid areas in the north require continued food assistance. The total number of refugees in Kenya currently stands at 275,000 - mostly from Somalia but some from Ethiopia.