The articles presented in this issue of Forced Migration Review are useful in reminding us of what some academics and policy-makers have been arguing for a long time - that 'camps’ represent a poor solution for refugees.
In Rwanda in April 1995, the international community was unable to protect thousands of IDPs (internally displaced people), mostly women and children, who were killed in a military operation to close camps for the internally displaced.
The Karen, Mon and Karenni refugee camps along Thailand's border with Burma(1) have traditionally been small, open settlements where the refugee communities have been able to maintain a village atmosphere, administering the camps and many aspects of assistance programmes themselves. Much of this, however, is changing.
This article explores camp policy as embodied in the rural settlement approach which has characterised the work of UNHCR and its implementing partners in their search for a durable solution to Eritrean/Ethiopian refugee issues in eastern Sudan.
The prospect of the imminent - and long awaited - referendum on self-determination raises a number of issues which the Saharawis will have to confront.
This two-part article presents a series of reflections on the experience of the Project for the Reconstruction of a Historical Memory in Guatemala (REMHI). This first part analyses the evolution and approach of the project. The second part of this two-part article, which deals with the contents and practical implications of the project report, will be published in the next issue.
Conservation schemes in Arabia continue to regard local populations as obstacles to be overcome - either by monetary compensation or by special terms of local employment - instead of as partners in sustainable conservation and development.
International organisations and NGOs have an important new document to turn to when they advocate on behalf of internally displaced populations: the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
A refugee described my camp as ‘a boredom-filled milieu full of paranoia sufferers’.