Stateless persons are victims of a serious human rights violation: they are deprived of the protective link between a state and its citizens. Yet statelessness is a forgotten issue in Europe, as in the rest of the world. Protection regimes…
In a world where all human beings must live on the territory of one nation state or another, this is a fundamental principle of justice. Having a nationality is a gateway to other rights; it is not without justification that…
As those IDPs able to do so have returned to their places of origin or integrated elsewhere, those who remain in situations of protracted internal displacement in Europe tend to be among the most vulnerable – generally poor, unemployed, without…
Compared to other protracted displacement situations, the duration of Darfur’s forced migration has been short. However, the fact that Darfuris have ended up in camps means that they are not able to practise the livelihoods that they have been pursuing…
The issues surrounding refugees and forced displacement are complex, and cut across a number of sectors, including development, humanitarian policy, peacebuilding, diplomacy and immigration. Responsibility for developing appropriate policy and programming to meet the needs of refugees is therefore shared…
People from eight nations are represented among the 2.3 million refugees in sub-Saharan Africa falling within UNHCR’s definition of a protracted situation (that is, more than 25,000 refugees in exile for more than five years), namely: Angola, Burundi, Central African…
Ordinarily, migration is not a ‘solution’ in the sense used by UNHCR. It is more often a temporary measure resorted to in order to overcome a deficit in the protection or assistance available to refugees. In West Africa, however, the…
The first major wave of mass displacement in Burundi’s recent history followed the 1972 ‘selective genocide’ against the Hutu population. The conflict produced one of Africa’s most prolonged refugee situations, in which over 200,000 Burundian refugees have lived in three…
Before UNHCR started its facilitated return programme in spring 2002 Burundi ranked second (after Afghanistan) in UNHCR’s global ‘country of origin’ statistics, despite its small size. With the return of half a million refugees and the majority of the country’s…
Between 1993 and 2000, Tanzania was host to almost 1.5 million refugees. Since the late 1990s, greater efforts have been made to repatriate refugees but even today there remain some 320,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Tanzania. Even with the…