Displaying items by tag: Refugees

Zimbabweis facing an extraordinary and multidimensional crisis. An estimated three million Zimbabweans have crossed the Limpopo river into South Africa as a matter of survival; more than three-quarters of the remaining population of nine million face serious food shortages; maternal mortality has tripled since the mid-1990s; a cholera epidemic has infected over 90,000 people, killing over 4,000; one in five adults are HIV positive, and one person dies every four minutes from AIDS; 94% of the population is officially unemployed; and thousands were beaten and intimidated by government security and paramilitary forces during last year’s elections. Political instability and mismanagement…

A familiar dilemma faced the Timorese government in developing a strategy to promote the return and resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs): should it determine property ownership before promoting return, or should it promote return first, and deal with property issues later? In the end, it chose to promote return and resettlement through a ‘cash for return’ programme, a decision that was heavily criticised by humanitarian agencies – including the UN – who argued that promoting return without first resolving property ownership issues would provoke further tensions and cause re-displacement. Today, it is clear that the government’s IDP reintegration programme…

The Defence Minister of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, recently stepped down in order to prepare a bid for the presidency in next years’ election. Santos has been lavished with praise for his term in charge of the Armed Forces and is credited, among other things, with successfully carrying out the government’s Democratic Security Policy – effectively giving a mortal blow to the FARC. At the heart of this policy is an attempt to defeat illegal armed groups and (re)-establish state authority. This involves demobilising right-wing paramilitaries and intensifying military incursions against the guerrillas. The end goal? To stabilise the territories…

The 19-year conflict between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) displaced over 1.8 million people in Northern Uganda. After a ceasefire agreement was finally reached in 2006, many displaced Acholis began to return to their villages of origin. Yet data collected in early 2008 indicates that the return process is still only at its start. Long-term displacement has caused social deterioration and many internally displaced people (IDPs) are heavily reliant on food rations and NGO and UN support provided in displacement camps. Security fears related to attacks from Karamojong cattle rustlers and the possible return of the…

Over the past decade, the humanitarian sector has seen a trend away from direct bilateral donor-to-NGO grants and towards the consolidation of funding streams into a variety of shared, centralised funding mechanisms – theoretically simplifying the process of project funding for all involved. While UN-led approaches like pooled funds have made some progress in improving operational coordination and donor alignment, they have simultaneously created serious new difficulties for implementing partners and their impact on programme quality is at best ambiguous. Mercy Corps believes, based on our experience managing a multi-donor, multi-partner funding pool in Zimbabwe, that NGO-led approaches to pooled…

Conflict affects all aspects of livelihoods. War strategies often deliberately undermine livelihoods and war economies may develop, where a powerful elite benefits from war by using violent or exploitative practices. War directly impacts on livelihoods through the destruction, looting and theft of key assets, and indirectly through the loss of basic services and access to employment, markets, farms or pastures. As a result, most people’s livelihood strategies become extremely restricted and may involve considerable risks to personal safety. Contemporary conflict is frequently protracted, and risks to livelihoods thus persist for long periods of time. Protracted conflict is frequently punctuated by…

Twenty years after the Burmese junta suppressed pro-democracy protesters, violations of human rights and humanitarian law in eastern Burma are more widespread and systematic than ever. Ten years after the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement were submitted, the international response in eastern Burma remains largely ineffective in dealing with a predatory governing regime. The Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) has been collaborating with ethnic community-based organisations to document the characteristics of internal displacement in eastern Burma since 2002. During this period there has been increasing debate about whether violations of human rights and humanitarian law in eastern Burma constitute an…

Mine warfare has taken place in Myanmar for more than two decades. Anti-personnel mines are used by both the formal military forces of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and by armed groups opposing the junta. Landmine Monitor has documented anti-personnel mine contamination in ten of the country’s 14 States and Divisions, mostly in border areas where opposition armed groups maintain their bases. Kayin and Kayah States and the eastern areas of Bago and Tanintharyi (Tenasserim) Divisions have suffered the most contamination by anti-personnel mines, and it is no surprise that these areas are also the source of the…

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is often characterised as one of the most – if not the most – neglected humanitarian crises in the world. The often-cited International Rescue Committee (IRC) mortality survey – updated in 2008 – estimates that, between August 1998 and April 2007, armed conflict and state collapse led to 5.4 million excess deaths (Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis, IRC, January 2008). Following the signing of peace accords in 2003, a gradual shift from humanitarian relief to post-conflict recovery has occurred. The resumption of armed conflict in 2007 between forces loyal…

Reading about Somalia can be a depressing experience: because of the awfulness of the situation; the dim prospects for things getting any better; and the long-running nature of the crisis there. Throughout the last two decades, humanitarian actors have sought to ameliorate the worst consequences of the conflict in the country, hampered by constant insecurity and the lack of funding that goes with low-profile crises like Somalia’s. While the events of 9/11 raised brief hopes of a renewed focus on failed states, attention to the potential threat of terrorism has not translated into positive action to resolve Somalia’s political crisis.…