Reports from human rights and humanitarian organisations and global media helped communicate the tremendous pain endured by Rwandan women and girls targeted by gender-related violence.(1) Two years after the genocide it was estimated that 54% of the population were female…
Massive resources have been deployed in Kosovo as the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe have spearheaded reconstruction. How can NGOs and the donor community learn to work with local women and…
GFAP created an overall framework to reconstruct the country and reverse ethnic cleansing. Five years later there are, according to UNHCR estimates, some 300,000 Bosnian refugees in need of a durable solution and a further 518,252 people still registered as…
The international community has massively assisted efforts to enable the return of minority populations to their homes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, yet a survey from the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) suggests that external assistance has often been misguided. In order…
Signs of hope include the collapse of the Khmer Rouge (ending decades of civil war), Cambodia’s entry into the Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) in April 1999 and the imminent trial of some former Khmer Rouge leaders.(1) Governance is…
For over 20 years, 10% of the entire country was effectively shut down as a bloody insurgency was fought by tribal groups from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, who felt themselves severely threatened by the government’s construction of a national, homogenous…
This in itself often causes conflicts within the refugee setting. As a result, conflict within a refugee community is often driven by the politics back home and yet, when refugees are finally able to return home, they are expected to…
It provides individuals with the opportunity to re-start and re-build their lives. It has been used successfully to resettle refugee women and girls who have been victims(2) of sexual or gender-related violence, including rape. This article outlines the grounds upon…
These were fundamentally borne of my academic grounding in UN law, international promotion and protection of human rights. I reminded myself of the basic principles of refugee protection in the 1951 Convention and read documents on UNHCR’s evolving mandate. I…
Protracted social conflicts do not erupt overnight. They are the result of a slow accumulation of tensions and hostilities built up over time. In the Horn of Africa an innovative early warning mechanism being explored by the Intergovernmental Authority on…