In 1980 the Mexican government created the Mexican Commission of Aid to Refugees (Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados – COMAR) to assist refugees arriving from South and Central America. 20 years later, Mexico became a signatory to the 1951…
In recent years the international humanitarian community’s response to complex humanitarian emergencies has shown an increasing need for accurate and timely analyses of the location and state of displaced people. Satellite images allow the pinpointing of populations concerned and the…
In the late 17th century, for example, the Salem Witch Trails in New England (which led to widespread executions and imprisonment) took place in an area that was seriously affected by violence and forced migration. According to one author: “The…
The conference, a joint venture between the Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies (RAISE) Initiative[1] and the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict (RHRC) Consortium[2], was the third in a series of conferences dedicated to the topic of RH…
Some 57,000 IDPs have returned to Chechnya despite the volatile security, while about 70,000 remain displaced in the North Caucasus. An unknown number of IDPs from Chechnya are living elsewhere in Russia. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) visited the…
Forced to flee their homes, often travelling great distances to escape enemy fire, these children are the most frequent victims of violence, disease, malnutrition and death. In the chaos of flight, these boys and girls may become separated from their…
The Convention on the Rights of the Child notes that there should be due regard to the desirability of continuity in a child's upbringing and to the child's ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background. Article 8 focuses on the legal…
What is your role at CIDA? I have been invited by the Minister for International Cooperation to be Special Advisor on War-affected Children to the Canadian International Development Agency. My role is to provide insight to CIDA on specific areas…
My name is Wilmot, from Liberia. I am 16 years old. At age five, I fled from Liberia with my mother to Sierra Leone. I was too young at the time to really understand what was happening. I heard the…
In addressing forced displacement in Colombia, for example, UNICEF has implemented a number of creative initiatives, with a rights perspective, that are being replicated in other parts of the world. Breaking the cycle of violence For more than 40 years…