Essential to effective planning in an emergency is knowing the scope of the disaster, the number of civilians who died, and from what cause. Yet in the Darfur emergency, it has proved particularly difficult to affirm with any certainty the…
CODHES and the Episcopal Conference of Colombia calculate that over 3.8 million people have been displaced in the last 20 years. Accurate figures are difficult to come by as official records suffer from gross underreporting. Studies indicate levels of underreporting…
Bhutanese Hindus of Nepalese origin – an estimated one sixth of the population of Bhutan – were arbitrarily stripped of their nationality in the early 1990s and either were forcibly expelled from the tiny Himalayan kingdom or fled in order…
Alfred is a 16-year-old unaccompanied asylum seeker from Kosovo. Frightened and confused, he looks even younger. He has been detained at the immigration detention centre in Sofia since May 2007, held under the same regime as adults. No officials from…
In 2002 the humanitarian community was shaken out of a complacent acceptance that international aid ‘does good’ into a recognition that it can also ‘do harm’. The West Africa sex-for-aid scandal exposed an entrenched pattern of sexual exploitation of refugee…
‘Protection through presence’ has become a popular term to describe a situation whereby an international humanitarian presence provides humanitarian assistance and possibly deters abuses of human rights. However, what does it mean in practice to provide protection in conflict-related displacement…
Obtaining reliable data on IDPs is challenging. In most countries affected by internal displacement, existing data on IDPs and the conditions of their displacement is incomplete, unreliable, out of date or inaccurate. This presents a serious obstacle to effective advocacy,…
Dubai-based RA International specialises in re-establishing infrastructure in shattered communities. Like all companies, we are in business to make a profit but we are committed to humanitarian causes, ensuring a return to the communities in which we work – and…
Very real concerns exist – such as those relating to ethics, physical security, political implications of activities in rapidly changing environments, logistical difficulties and the technical challenges of working with mobile populations and populations with unusual demographic compositions.[1] Yet our…
The Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, together with the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, convened a meeting of academic researchers working on issues related to IDPs in Cairo, Egypt, from 8-9 March 2007. The meeting,…