During 2007 the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) has been celebrating the 25th anniversary of its foundation in 1982. We have been using the anniversary to highlight the rich variety of the Centre’s achievements and activities and its unique contribution in…
In the north-western department of Chocó, near Colombia’s border with Panama, Afro-Colombian and indigenous groups of IDPs have established ‘Humanitarian Zones’ on small patches of collective land in a desperate bid to protect themselves, hang onto their land and livelihoods,…
As with any reform, says UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes in his article on page 4, “you have the believers, the sceptics and the opponents.” The perspectives of all three camps are represented in this issue’s feature section on…
For those who believe in it, it’s about fixing things and improving on them. For the sceptics, it’s about changing things for the sake of change, or replacing one slightly dysfunctional system with another equally dysfunctional one. For those opposed…
The Global Humanitarian Platform (GHP) was created in July 2006 to bring together the three families of the humanitarian community – NGOs, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and the UN and related international organisations – to increase the effectiveness of…
Set up in July 2006, the GHP brings together the three pillars of the humanitarian community – NGOs, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and the UN – to increase the effectiveness of humanitarian action. The GHP seeks to promote partnership…
‘Unity in Diversity’ is the slogan and guiding principle of the One UN team in Rwanda. In April 2007 all resident and some non-resident UN agencies signed up to an ambitious schedule for the implementation of ‘One Programme’, ‘One Budgetary…
“Uncertain, inconsistent and unpredictable.” Those were the damning words used to assess UNHCR’s policy towards IDPs in an evaluation report commissioned by the agency in 2005. Jointly undertaken by an independent consultant and a UNHCR staff member, the report provided…
In an article Magnus Murray and I wrote for FMR in 2005[1] on protection and assistance deficiencies of the UN humanitarian programme in Liberia we concluded that, with improved humanitarian leadership, these deficiencies could be reversed. Today, the process of…
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) takes part in many of the inter-agency groups that are developing or refining aspects of the reform process and actively participates in a number of the global clusters. For…