Governments and the UN believe that the response to internal displacement has often been ineffective. In order to strengthen the international community’s response in situations of internal displacement, a new Unit has been established under the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee.…
It is a great pleasure to be in Oslo again. I would like to thank the Norwegian Refugee Council and its Secretary-General Steinar Sørlie and the Global IDP Project led by Marc Vincent for the important work they are doing…
I should like to share with you a few impressions from a number of IDP conferences that I have attended over the last four or five years. There have been IDP conferences, symposia, seminars, round tables, square tables, all sorts…
Working group I - research Transformations in local organisations, institutions and leadership Birgitte Refslund Sørensen The Response Strategies project has broken new ground in identifying IDP response strategies. From this study and other ongoing research projects emerge a number of…
Four years ago we published an issue on ‘The Syria crisis, displacement and protection’. In the Foreword to the issue, the former UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, Nigel Fisher, observed that “While the crisis may be prolonged,…
This important issue of Forced Migration Review draws our attention to the current challenges facing displaced Syrians and the continuing search for solutions. The statistics of Syrian displacement are staggering – and the numbers continue to rise. Half of Syria’s…
As a Syrian with a background in humanitarian analysis, research and writing, for a long time I have been eager to write about the importance of dignity to Syrians at this particular moment in time. It has repeatedly struck me…
Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp is located on about 1km2 of land close to Beirut’s international airport, and is one of twelve official Palestinian camps in Lebanon established following the creation of Israel in 1948. Before the Syrian conflict, it accommodated…
Shatila camp, covering less than a square mile on the southern borders of Beirut, is one of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon that was established in 1949, for merely 3,000 people. Today, the camp occupies the same limited space but…
The eastern Lebanese region of Beka’a, which shares a long border with Syria, hosts around 360,000 registered Syrian refugees. This is both the highest absolute number among regions in Lebanon and also the highest proportion of refugees to local population.…