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During the past 25 years, Forced Migration Review (FMR) has played a vital role in enabling researchers, practitioners and policymakers to exchange information and ideas on refugee-related issues. In this article, Jeff Crisp provides a personal (and alphabetical) perspective on some of the events, trends and organisations that FMR has covered over the past two and half decades.
What we have today is an imperfect international welfare system that provides some assistance and some protection to individuals and communities affected by crisis and conflict. What then lies ahead?
Recent years have seen a growth in debate, learning and advocacy in the humanitarian sector on the needs and rights of persons with disabilities among displaced populations.
Looking through a displacement lens at environmental, technological, anthropological, political and other factors affecting societies now and in the past provides food for thought both on how we interpret the past and on how we envisage the future.
There is more guidance than ever before on what we should be doing in reproductive health in emergency response. Resources being dedicated to this area of health have significantly increased but unequally, and safe abortion and family planning services are still neglected.
Commitment and capacity to address Georgian IDPs’ needs took a long time to build, and depended heavily on non-governmental interventions and support, ranging from visits by the UN, reports and articles, legal advice, pilot projects and pressure from civil society.
Today, many humanitarian agencies have set up systems that enable their end-user stakeholders to submit feedback, including formal complaints. Their purpose is to remove the real and perceived barriers to giving the intended beneficiaries of humanitarian action a real say in it. This is a core part of a larger project of accountability and setting of standards.
As the number of people affected by disasters globally continues to grow, preparedness and ‘last mile’ operational assistance must be adaptable and connections with the commercial world maximised.
Kenya’s traditionally accommodating asylum regime has been rocked by changes in the main causes and contexts of displacement, both internally and externally. Those working to protect refugees in Kenya have had to adapt to new threats and adopt new practices.
The very first issue of Forced Migration Review (successor to the RPN newsletter) in April 1998 was dedicated to internal displacement, just two months after the publication of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Since then we have seen the remarkable rise of internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the global agenda, as a result of a growing body of evidence and research, the development of national and regional legal frameworks, and the mainstreaming of IDP policy in the UN system.
For 25 years Forced Migration Review has tracked the disasters and crises, concerns and responses to forced migration, from Vietnamese boat people to Syrian refugees. So what has changed and where do we go in the next 25 years?
Over the past 25 years, Forced Migration Review and its precursor the Refugee Participation Network newsletter have not only captured, but arguably have also contributed to, important evolutions in the thinking and practice of approaches for protecting, assisting and finding solutions for forcibly uprooted people.