In 1974, following nearly twenty years of intermittent violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriot nationalist militias and an attempted coup d’état by Greek Cypriot extremists, Turkey invaded Cyprus and occupied the northern 37% of the island. 170,000 Greek Cypriots left…
The situation of Bosnian and Croatian refugees in Serbia was one of five identified for support when UNHCR launched a Special Initiative on Protracted Refugee Situations in 2008. In December 2008 a high-level meeting took place in Geneva between the…
Since the end of its internal conflict in 2000, Peru has integrated humanitarian statutes into national law and, through regional decentralisation, has tried to tackle the pervasive levels of poverty that sparked the Maoist insurgency in 1980. In spite of…
Opportunities to tap the potential contribution of refugees as key stakeholders in peace processes include: developing participatory mechanisms to ensure the inclusion of civil society in peace talks honing mediation skills to channel refugees’ knowledge and interests into peace talks.…
Improved access to financial services may be an effective household coping strategy in situations where displacement has become protracted and where IDPs continue to suffer as a result of their marginalisation or where there is no imminent durable solution available…
While in theory displacement is meant to be short term, in reality that is rarely the case and millions of young people around the world are growing up in the confines of refugee camps and urban shanty towns, having never…
Youth violence emerged from Cairo’s Sudanese refugee community in 2005 in the form of self-declared gangs, which reshaped existing concepts of social systems and challenged refugee advocates and assistance providers. In the years since, some service providers have limited or…
In contrast to most situations of refugee flight, it is not individual persecution or country circumstances that are the cause of the Palestinians’ protracted exile but rather the dissolution and disappearance of an internationally recognised political entity to which Palestinians…
There are still hundreds of thousands of refugees and IDPs displaced by ‘frozen conflicts’ in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. For more than ten years, return has been the most favoured solution, not only by those displaced but…
As Spain was preparing to relinquish control and withdraw from Western Sahara, Morocco asserted its claim of sovereignty over the territory of the former Spanish colony. In response, the Polisario – a Sahrawi group that had been fighting the Spanish…