English

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.

The Lord’s Resistance Army’s increasingly violent attacks against civilians in Uganda from the 1990s and well into the 2000s – through large-scale and systematic abductions, massacres, maiming and military use of children – led to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis characterised by massive population displacement.

Throughout decades of brutal conflict, which have seen thousands of villages destroyed and millions of people displaced, Burma’s ruling regime has made no effort to provide support for affected civilians. As a result, Burma’s ethnic non-state armed groups (NSAGs) – thought to hold territory covering a quarter of the country’s landmass – play a crucial role as protectors and providers of humanitarian aid.

Practically all armed groups are heavily dependent on external support. Armed groups primarily seek support from both other states and from the diasporas, displaced populations and other armed groups, in order to prevent the burden of  the war effort from falling entirely on the civil population they claim to protect, a situation that has its own political costs. States too need external support to deal with outbreaks of instability and violence; during the Cold War this was normal and it still continues today in most current armed conflicts.