A study conducted in Jordan in 20091 shows that a lack of information and transparency contributes to a dynamic of despair among the displaced and exacerbates conditions that motivate them to give credence to hearsay in making decisions about their future.
Decades of armed conflict in Colombia have displaced more than three million people, primarily in rural areas – indigenous communities, people of African descent and small farmers. In 2009 the national forum of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, in a sitting following ruling T-025 of 2004 that declared displacement to be an “unconstitutional state of affairs”, declared that the state’s response to the crisis had been neither integrated nor coordinated.
Fourteen years of civil war in Liberia displaced an estimated one-third of the population both internally and as refuges to neighbouring West African countries, Europe and America. Since the war ended in 2003, a large proportion of Liberians have returned home either voluntarily or through assisted repatriations. Women face a myriad of particular challenges in the return process, and their needs are as varied and complex as the reasons for which they migrated in the first place.
A striking feature of the African Union (AU) Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons (Kampala Convention)1 is that it goes beyond the scope that its title implies in that it also contains the right to protection from arbitrary displacement. This includes both internal displacement and displacement across international borders.
There are two types of problems associated with international refugee rights: ‘formal’ problems referring to the definition of legal concepts relating to refugee status, refuge and asylum; and ‘practical’ problems linked to implementation of these rights by nation states. On the first question, it is necessary to ask why and how ‘refugee status’ limits the right to hospitality, as understood by ‘asylum’.
An old Afghan proverb provides the title for a new UNHCR study which examines the experiences of unaccompanied Afghan children who have made the long overland journey to Europe. Trees Only Move in the Wind (meaning nothing happens without a good cause) attempts to explain why increasing numbers of Afghan children are encouraged and even obliged by their families to undertake this arduous and expensive journey, usually at the hands of unscrupulous people smugglers.
Millennium Development Goal 6 (MDG 6)(1) seeks improved access to HIV prevention services and AIDS treatment, care and support, and halting and reversing the spread of the HIV epidemic by 2015.
A thorough discussion of how and why forced migration can increase risks of HIV transmission in the region would require reviewing a myriad of social, cultural, economic and even physiological dynamics. So I will focus on a few issues of particular relevance – HIV in humanitarian settings, security-related programme developments, and the special needs of the millions of Asians who, out of desperation, find themselves exploited and unprotected as labourers in foreign lands.
بعد 20 عاماً من الحرب، أصبحت حركة الشباب القوة العسكرية المسيطرة في مواجهة الحكومة التي تلقى الدعم من الأمم المتحدة في مقديشو والقوات العسكرية التابعة للاتحاد الأفريقي التي تدعمها. ومع تعزيز رؤية الحركة في إقامة ""الأمة"، وهي الدولة الإسلامية الموحدة الخاضعة لأحكام الشريعة الإسلامية، تجذب حركة الشباب كلاً من الدعم الشعبي والنقد اللاذع بين الشعب الصومالي داخل البلاد وخارجها على حد سواء. فحركة الشباب هي المحرّض على استمرار النزاع، لكنّها أيضاً تمثّل أفضل وسيلة ناجعة لتحقيق السلام. فرؤية الحركة تؤكد على سمو الإسلام على الانتماءات القبلية لمن تسببت الحركة في نزوحهم.
تورطت الجماعات المسلحة غير التابعة للدولة في الكونغو في ارتكاب انتهاكات حقوق الإنسان السافرة، خاصة العنف الجنسي، وذلك ضد المدنيين لأكثر من عقدين من الزمن. وتختلف هذه الجماعات ما بين الوحدات العسكرية الكونغولية المنظمة إلى الجماعات الصغيرة للمليشيا المسلحة من رواندا وبوروندي إلى مليشيا ما يماي المنظمة محلياً. وتبرز المعلومات القادمة من المنطقة الدور المحوري الذي تلعبه هذه الجماعات في اقتراف العنف ضد المدنيين والتعجيل بالنزوح الجماعي.