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…
The study of displacement has a long history, yet it was not until the publication of Barbara Harrell-Bond’s seminal work Imposing Aid – Emergency Assistance to Refugees in 1986 that the entire system of international humanitarian assistance was submitted to…
During Refugee Week 2018, the Refugee Studies Centre showed a new film entitled A Life Not Ordinary. The film illustrates the life of a woman born in a remote town in South Dakota, US, during the Great Depression. It traces…
Since its creation in 2001, Keeping Children Safe (KCS), a global network of organisations committed to child safeguarding, has driven forward standards and implementation in efforts within the aid sector to address sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA). Together with experts…
In September 2015 something quite extraordinary transformed the global public response to the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. The publication of the photo of drowned toddler Alan Kurdi on a beach in Turkey had far-reaching impact, mobilising ordinary citizens to protest…
When a disaster strikes, the generosity of individuals is triggered by a concern for humanity. However, some disasters tend to receive more funds than others, and the role of the images and messaging used to depict such situations can be…
Since 2015, Greece has been an entrance country and transit point into Europe for hundreds of thousands of ‘border crossers’.[1] The EU–Turkey Agreement of 2016 transformed the country into a place of limbo, where asylum seekers are forced into precarious…
Fraudulent acts by persons of concern can have an impact on the quality of humanitarian programmes and on agencies’ accountability to donors and the affected population at large. For example, UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) has long-established internal procedures to…
Few places evoke images of destruction and suffering created by war more strongly than Kabul. Kabul's children have featured in news reports and aid agency appeals to illustrate the devastation and displacement wrought by more than two decades of armed…
