We are indebted to Geeta Narayan, Project Officer for Humanitarian Policy in the Office of Emergency Programmes, UNICEF New York, for her hard work as guest editor and to UNICEF for their financial support of this FMR’s feature section on Displaced children and adolescents: challenges and opportunities. We’re delighted to include an introductory piece by Nils Kastberg, Director of UNICEF’s Office of Emergency Programmes, and a specially commissioned interview with General Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian International Development Agency’s Special Advisor on War-affected Children.
For those of us far from day-to-day contact with those directly affected by conflict and displacement, General Dallaire’s passionate words are a reminder to retain our sense of outrage: "I don’t see how we can make treaties on weapons and on prevention of war and we can create an international court yet not move in a cultural sense to develop repugnance about children as combatants."
The feature theme of issue 16 (to be published January 2003) will be African displacement: roots, resources and resolution. Issue 17, to be published in May 2003 in association with the Brookings-SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, will focus on ‘when displacement ends’. If you are interested in writing on either of these subjects, please contact us as soon as possible at fmr@qeh.ox.ac.uk.
Other themes under consideration for 2003 include ‘reproductive health for refugees/IDPs’, ‘asylum’ and ‘logistics of assistance’. Again, if you are interested in writing on any of these subjects, please contact us. We can then let you know what we decide – and obviously if we get a lot of interest in certain themes, that will help our decision making! And please remember that we keep space in each issue for ‘non-theme’ articles on any other subject relating to forced migration.
Many thanks to those of you who responded to our question about an FMR CD ROM. If you missed the question, here it is again…. If we were to put all back issues of Forced Migration Review (for our three language editions) on a CD ROM, would it be of use/interest to you? Would you be prepared to pay? Do contact us.
We continue to update the acclaimed Did you know? section of our website. Please have a look, send us any suggestions and tell friends and colleagues about our site. If you read Spanish, you may be interested in our new Spanish language site: www.migracionesforzadas.org
We welcome Kate Prudden to the FMR team. She replaced Sharon Ellis for several months earlier this year while Sharon was on maternity leave. Kate will now be working one day a week with FMR, focusing particularly on website development, outreach and collaboration.
With best wishes.
Marion Couldrey & Tim Morris
Editors, Forced Migration Review