The future of displacement is clearly urban – and clearly fraught with challenges. The Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) has recently undertaken research into the risks and challenges confronting refugee women in urban areas – as well as the opportunities they…
There are over 28 million people living in Malaysia. Among the three to four million non-citizens are around 100,000 asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons. Malaysia is signatory neither to the 1951 Refugee Convention, nor to its 1967 Protocol. It…
More than half of the world’s refugees now reside in non-camp settings, including urban areas, and a larger proportion of them than before are now fleeing from middle-income countries where the demographic and disease epidemiologic profiles are those of an…
Social support refers to the perceived or actual psychological benefits from social contacts, such as trust, cohesion, and intimacy, as well as to the exchange of information and material goods. Social networks provide the connections which allow for the exchange…
As this issue of FMR goes to press, the humanitarian response to the effects of the earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010 is still gearing up. Even at this early stage talk is quite rightly turning to what happens…
The increasing presence of refugees in urban settings poses some unique challenges. Urban refugees are expected to become self-sufficient more readily than their camp-based counterparts who, often prevented from engaging in subsistence or income-generating activities, are typically assumed to require…
Traditionally there has been a focus on the delivery of ‘products’ to meet the shelter needs of individual families, often in a rural setting. In an urban context, the focus needs to switch to people’s limits and capacities, especially since…
In 2009 in Goma town, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), CARE International supported conflict-displaced families who were being hosted in the houses of resident families. The assistance was for both the host and the displaced families. We noted that, in…
Africa is taking the lead in formulating human rights standards to legislate for protection and assistance for IDPs. Angola, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Uganda were among the first in the world to develop national policies or plans of action based…
UNHCR’s latest ‘Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas’, issued in September 2009, responds to the phenomenon of refugee urbanisation, partly mirroring the global trend towards urbanisation but also reflecting sub-standard care and protracted stays in refugee camps…