Travel medicine (TM) as a specific field emerged in the 1980s, driven in great part by the pharmaceutical industry catering for tourists from northern countries visiting tropical areas. However, why should travel-tailored health care be reserved for wealthy travellers? What…
The principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence are intended to enable, characterise and guide the delivery of humanitarian assistance. However, as conflicts grow more complex, interpretations of humanitarian principles are being questioned, particularly in areas under the control or…
Over recent years, EU migration policies have negatively affected the conditions under which humanitarian actors can carry out their work along migration routes. National Red Cross Societies are witnessing with concern how these policies are narrowing the space for them…
I first made contact with Barbara in October 2011, after hearing a BBC radio interview with her in which she denounced as premature the planned invocation of the cessation clause for Rwandan refugees. Her defence of Rwandan refugees of different…
Barbara Harrell-Bond’s major works Imposing Aid and Rights in Exile (the latter co-authored with Guglielmo Verdirame) examine aid modalities in two different eras: Southern Sudan in the early 1980s, and Kenya and Uganda in the late 1990s. They are rich…
Experiments with new technologies in migration management are increasing: from big data predictions about population movements in the Mediterranean, to the use of automated decision making in immigration and refugee applications, to artificial intelligence (AI) lie detectors deployed at European…
Being affable was not one of Barbara Harrell-Bond’s qualities. Irascible, impatient and demanding, she alienated and inspired people in equal numbers with what at times seemed to be a one-person quest to advocate for refugees. She had no time for…
It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to acknowledge the centrality of Barbara Harrell-Bond as a personal mentor, as a founding member of a field that bridges study, activism and practice, and as the co-founder back in 1999 of…
Having lived and conducted research in a number of African countries, Barbara often acted as an expert witness in asylum cases. These related most frequently to the risk of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) but occasionally also to other topics, such…
On a Wednesday evening in early 2001, the large lecture hall at the American University in Cairo (AUC) was packed. The audience was largely made up of representatives of Cairo’s growing numbers of Sudanese, Somali, Eritrean, Ethiopian and Sierra Leonean…