Refugee Assistance Research Articles

Questioning Governance in Protracted Refugee Situations: The Fiduciary Nature of the State-Refugee Relationship

In recent decades, increases in the number and duration of protracted refugee situations (PRSs) have revealed substantial shortcomings in the international refugee protection framework. Falling as they do outside of the range of traditional refugee crises, PRSs present the international community with new challenges specifically with respect to effective responses and the allocation of responsibility. Efforts to address these situations have been hampered not only by the lack resources and political will among states but by the absence of a clear legal framework. Too often states abdicate their protection responsibilities and rely upon UNHCR to step into their shoes. At a time when there is the need for effective monitoring and enforcement of refugee protection and assistance, UNHCR is reduced to the role of mere aid provider. This article proposes an alternative conception of state responsibility for PRS based on the fiduciary theory of state legal authority. By embracing a fiduciary understanding of the refugee-host state relationship, we have a legal basis for the duty and responsibility of states to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of refugees within their borders that arises as a function of that relationship as opposed to being imposed externally. With the fiduciary theory of state legal authority clearly placing primary responsibility for refugee protection on the host state, the refugee assistance function of UNHCR can be reconceived as being supportive in nature and supplementary to its original protection and supervisory mandate.

A Simple Solution to War Refugees? The Latin American Expanded Definition and its Relationship to IHL

This chapter explores how the expanded refugee definition contained in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees protects war refugees. It thus contributes to an existing body of scholarship, which borrows considerably from international humanitarian law (IHL) to attempt to interpret the Cartagena definition. Yet existing scholarship tends to study the expanded refugee definition as if it were the only legacy of the Cartagena Declaration. In fact, it should be acknowledged that the latter's contribution to refugee protection in Latin America includes formulating an entire regional framework for refugee protection and assistance that encompasses a strong focus on durable solutions, facilitating the institutionalisation of refugee protection in Latin America, and promoting cooperation among States, international organizations and the Inter-American Human Rights System. It also helped to promote the concept of protection and assistance to internally displaced persons. Keywords: Cartagena Declaration; Inter-American Human Rights System; international humanitarian law (IHL); Latin America; refugee protection

Creating the safe harbour: Depictions of Swedish refugee assistance actions in wartime propaganda film

This article examines the production and content of Swedish state propaganda films designed to foster public support for the country's refugee rescue and assistance actions in the latter half of World War II. It argues that these films produced an exceptionalist image of Sweden, in which neutrality came to symbolize unique national values that endowed Sweden with an ethical responsibility to offer help to those in occupied neighbouring countries. This depiction departed from earlier state-produced narratives of Swedish neutrality that characterized the country as under immediate foreign threat.

Using Clinical Education to Innovate the Law Curriculum and Address an Unmet Legal Need: A Hong Kong Perspective

The Redmond-Roper Report on Legal Education and Training in Hong Kong, published in 2001, identified problems with the quality of legal education in Hong Kong. Chief amongst those was a shortage of law graduates with the legal skills, sensitivity and ethical understanding necessary to address the diverse legal needs of the local community.In a blueprint for change in Hong Kong’s legal education system, the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong was established. One key innovation since the law faculty’s inception has been the creation of the “Refugee Assistance Clinic”. In partnership with pioneers in community legal services, the faculty offers law students the opportunity to assist asylum seekers in securing legal representation. Inspired by clinical projects around the world, this programme encourages students to see legal practice as socially situated, to reflect on the nature of the lawyer’s relationship with a client and to evaluate ethical conduct in a practical context.The purpose of this paper will be to set out the early phases of this initiative in bringing students actively into the community and delivering the change to legal education required by Redmond-Roper. It will show how the Refugee Assistance Clinic has furthered the goals of Redmond-Roper and helped to address the unmet legal needs of refugees in Hong Kong.

Medical conditions among Iraqi refugees in Jordan: data from the United Nations Refugee Assistance Information System

To determine the range and burden of health services utilization among Iraqi refugees receiving health assistance in Jordan, a country of first asylum. Medical conditions, diagnosed in accordance with the tenth revision of the International classification of diseases, were actively monitored from 1 January to 31 December 2010 using a pilot centralized database in Jordan called the Refugee Assistance Information System. There were 27 166 medical visits by 7642 Iraqi refugees (mean age: 37.4 years; 49% male; 70% from Baghdad; 6% disabled; 3% with a history of torture). Chronic diseases were common, including essential hypertension (22% of refugees), visual disturbances (12%), joint disorders (11%) and type II diabetes mellitus (11%). The most common reasons for seeking acute care were upper respiratory tract infection (11%), supervision of normal pregnancy (4%) and urinary disorders (3%). The conditions requiring the highest number of visits per refugee were cerebrovascular disease (1.46 visits), senile cataract (1.46) and glaucoma (1.44). Sponsored care included 31 747 referrals or consultations to a specialty service, 18 432 drug dispensations, 2307 laboratory studies and 1090 X-rays. The specialties most commonly required were ophthalmology, dentistry, gynaecology and orthopaedic surgery. Iraqi refugees in countries of first asylum and resettlement require targeted health services, health education and sustainable prevention and control strategies for predominantly chronic diseases.

Lessons from the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami for Researchers and Policy Makers: Legal and Regulatory Comparative of the Role of Telecommunications in Disaster Planning and Response in the US and Japan

Devastating natural disasters struck Japan on March 11, 2011 leaving some 340,000 citizens refugees, and nearly 20,000 dead or missing. The 9.0 magnitude Great East Japan Earthquake and the ensuing tsunami wrought destruction on all facets of Japan’s infrastructure and have been declared the most costly natural disaster in world history. Despite the biblical scale of the catastrophes, within seconds of the disaster a complex network of sensors delivered a flurry of critical information into multi-stakeholder disaster networks that conveyed over diverse physical infrastructure life-saving warnings to the public, without a single accident safely brought to a halt speeding trains across the country, halted factories and elevators, and set in motion other important disaster responses. Japan's decades of preparation and investment were observed to demonstrate the value of communications in achieving key public safety goals of protecting life and property. The paper reviews the key national law foundations for disaster planning and management, regulatory facets of disaster networks and warning systems, the role of industry in preparation and participation in disasters, and citizens' role in communications aspects of Japan's survival of the 311 disasters. The paper identifies important comparative observations with U.S. approaches and experiences for the role of communications in disaster detection and warning, carrier and infrastructure preparedness, refugee assistance and support, social and other new media, and other emerging topics. More than one year later, Japan's ongoing policy responses and developments are reviewed to identify important lessons learned for researchers and policy makers. Bio: James Miller is a Senior Attorney Advisor in the Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission, Adjunct Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law, an Affiliated Research Fellow of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at the Columbia Business School and a 2004-2006 Mansfield Fellow. At the FCC, Mr. Miller focuses on regulatory and policy matters related to spectrum and and Broadband Internet technology. As Adjunct Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law, he teaches U.S.-Japan Comparative Law and develops programs focused on East-Asia and technology. As a Mansfield Fellow, Mr. Miller explored Japanese regulatory policies for broadband technology and the information society, particularly focusing on legal and regulatory reforms and spectrum policy, in the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Radio Policy Bureau (MIC), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Office of Senior-Vice Minister Yoshitaka SAKURADA, and the Tokyo District and High Court’s Administrative Litigation and Intellectual Property Sections. He is a cum laude graduate of the Washington College of Law, American University, and holds a bachelors degree in Economics and East-Asian studies (honors) from the University of Kansas. He is bilingual in English and Japanese and frequently speaks and publishes in Japanese for business, legal, and technical audiences in Japan.

International Forced Migration and Pak- Afghan Development Concerns: Exploring Afghan Refugee Livelihood Strategies

This study investigates the livelihood strategies employed by Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan. These refugees were forced to take refuge in Pakistan after Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1978. Three decades after their migration, and after repeated Pakistani government attempts to resettle them in Afghanistan, scores of Afghan refugees still reside in Pakistan. This paper discusses the evolving relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan over the years and their respective implications. Researching the various livelihood strategies that Afghan refugees pursued their impact on the Pakistani labor market is discussed. By means of taking a case study of an Afghan refugee woman, this study concludes that there exists a gender dimension in Afghan refugee population. In doing so two developmental concerns are identified i) development projects focused on refugee assistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan ignore the development concerns of the women population ii) countries that provide refuge to victims of war are exposed to a new set of development challenges in addition to their already burdened economy. This paper furthers the academic debate on achieving the development challenge of attaining a stable South Asia, in light of the AfPak strategy initiated by President Obama in 2010, and reflects on potential areas for policy making for Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States.

Neurological disorders in Iraqi refugees in Jordan: data from the United Nations Refugee Assistance Information System

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognizes 43.7 million forcibly displaced persons and asylum seekers due to conflict and persecution worldwide. Neurological disorders have rarely been described in displaced persons but likely pose a significant burden of disease. We describe the disease spectrum and health service utilization of Iraqi refugees and asylum seekers with neurological disorders using an information system developed by the UNHCR. Neurological disorders were actively monitored among the 7,642 UNHCR-registered Iraqi refugees and asylum seekers who received health and humanitarian assistance using a pilot, centralized, database called the Refugee Assistance Information System (RAIS) in the Kingdom of Jordan in 2010. There were 122 neurological diagnoses reported in 1,328 refugees (mean age 41years, 49% female, 10% disabled, 43% with pending resettlement applications) in 2,659 health visits, accounting for 17% of all refugees who sought health assistance in RAIS. Referral to a neurologist occurred in 178 cases (13.4%). The most frequent ICD-10 neurological diagnoses were dorsalgia (back pain) (29.7% of individuals with neurological disorders), headache (13.1%), and epilepsy (12.6%). Approximately 1 in 20 Iraqi refugees with a neurological diagnosis self-reported a history of torture, which was higher than Iraqi refugees without a history of torture [66/1,328 versus 196/6,314, odds ratio (OR)=1.63, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.21-2.18]. Neurological disease affects a high proportion of Iraqi refugees, including victims of torture and the disabled. Refugees require dedicated care for treatment of neurological disease with a focus on pain disorders and epilepsy.

The Faith Community's Role in Refugee Resettlement in the United States

The United States is home to the largest resettled refugee population in the world, and continues to accept more resettled refugees for admission annually than all other resettlement countries combined. Refugees in the US are resettled through a public–private partnership model that leverages the support of private local community networks, particularly faith-based groups, with public support received from US government agencies. Faith-based organizations and faith communities in the US have a strong legacy of providing support for refugee assistance and protection and advocating for refugees’ access to resettlement as a durable solution. They continue to be instrumental in resettling 70 per cent of all refugees arriving in the US today, from varied geographic, ethnic and faith backgrounds. This article uses the case of Church World Service (CWS) to discuss the historic significance of faith communities and faith-based organizations (FBOs) in refugee resettlement in the United States, their unique contributions to refugees’ local integration, and how they continue to respond to meet the needs of refugees in a changing social and economic context. While reference is made to the contributions of a variety of faith communities, the perspectives and experience of Church World Service staff, affiliates, partners, denominations and refugees resettled through CWS networks are highlighted.

The ‘Protection Gap’ and the Palestinian Refugees of the Gaza Strip

The paper emphasized the conceptual and didactical, rather than the legal or political, need to note the distinction between the West Bank and Gaza Strip when it comes to legal protection and assistance for refugees. He demonstrated how Israel used the pre-1967 geographical division to widen the gap between Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip through its system of military orders and declarations, giving the specific example of Military Order No. 1650 issued in 2010. The other issue is related to possible legal and political consequences of Israeli withdrawal in 2005 and the Hamas takeover of Gaza Strip in 2007. He concluded that the situation in the Gaza Strip is particularly challenging to the international community, and the need of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip for protection and assistance is pushing UNRWA to reshape its mandate to include providing such protection.

Sanctuary Revisited: Central American Refugee Assistance in the History of Church-based Immigrant Advocacy

Extant literature on the U.S. Sanctuary movement of the 1980s mainly facilitates an understanding of the movement as part of liberal religious resistance to the Reagan-Bush Administrations' policy in Central America. However, I argue that Sanctuary should also be understood as pivotal to church involvement in a longer lineage of social activism that can be called immigrant advocacy. Church-based immigrant advocates (CBIAs) were in short supply until the end of World War II, when Christian clergy and laity used biblical calls for hospitality to argue for the admission of thousands of displaced persons from Europe. Over the next quarter-century, many CBIAs provided services to political refugees admitted under State Department criteria. But as CBIAs grew frustrated with double standards in refugee admissions, they began to develop discourses legitimating hospitality work outside of a nation-state framework. In tracing the history of church-based immigrant advocacy, Sanctuary indexes the juncture at which many Christian organizations widened their operations beyond the standard of sovereignty to accommodate undocumented refugees as well as immigrants motivated by economic need.

“Bringing New Hope and New Life”: The Rhetoric of Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Agencies

Faith-based organizations play an important role in the resettlement of refugees in the United States, though little is known about the function of faith in the organizations' assistance of refugees. Most literature about refugees also fails to attend to the intersubjectivity between refugees and other individuals or groups, focusing instead on a singular subject or group identity. This article bridges these gaps by rhetorically analyzing the ways faith-based organizations construct the subject positions of refugees and volunteers on their websites in order to draw volunteers and donors to support the organizations. Guided by theories concerning recognition and subjectivity, this article demonstrates that faith-based groups rely on dichotomized constructions of subjectivity where volunteers are positioned as full actors in the lives of refugees, and refugees are positioned as immobile in their own lives. The texts also produce (mis)recognition of the intersubjectivity of refugees and volunteers through deployments of discourses of difference and sameness. Not only do these constructions call volunteers to serve because they are positioned as full agents of change and upholders of Christian goodness, but the constructions maintain a modernist worldview of people, places, and events as autonomous and stable.

Can Compensation Prevent Impoverishment? Reforming Resettlement through Investments and Benefit-Sharing. Edited by Michael M. Cernea and Hari Mohan Mathur.

This volume sets out to answer fundamental questions about the justice of land acquisition, involuntary asset loss and resettlement for those who find themselves in the way of ‘development’ and for whom legal protection is insufficient. The volume is an important addition to involuntary resettlement studies and directly relevant to our knowledge (including policy and operational knowledge) about refugee assistance and the longer-term rehabilitation of displaced communities whatever the proximate cause of their displacement. The Journal of Refugee Studies should be commended for the serious and sustained interest it shows in the body of work generally known as involuntary resettlement studies. It is volumes such as this, on the economics of resettlement and recovery, which justify the editors’ decision to include articles and book reviews on development-created forced displacement and resettlement in a journal that is principally concerned with forced migration against the backdrop of conflict and crisis. While the expert contributors to this volume have spent many years working on resettlement in major lending institutions — in many cases at high levels — they collectively ask commonsense questions: does this dam, road or environmental project really justify the displacement of already vulnerable people and are we certain that we have the policy and operational tools and political will to ensure that those people do not suffer the fate of so many millions in the past who have been impoverished and marginalized as a direct result of their uprooting? And further, if the justifications are strong enough to go ahead with the project, then is it genuinely the case that ‘compensation can prevent that impoverishment?’, that ‘displacement can be turned into development?’ (see Jayewardeme), or that ‘improved resettlement can reduce poverty?’ (see Tamondong). These are the questions that governments, commercial banks, multilateral agencies and businesses should—but sadly too rarely do—ask themselves when weighing up the merit of a particular public or private investment against its predictable human and social costs.

Darfur Refugees in Cairo

Hundreds of thousands of Darfur people affected by the Sudanese genocide have fled to Cairo, Egypt, in search of assistance. Collaborating with Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA), the authors conducted a mental health care needs assessment among Darfur refugees in Cairo. Information was collected using individual and focus group interviews to identify gaps in mental health care and develop understandings of emotional and relationship problems. The refugee mental health care system has a piecemeal structure with gaps in outpatient services. There is moderate to severe emotional distress among many Darfur refugees, including symptoms of depression and trauma, and interpersonal conflict, both domestic violence and broader community conflict, elevated relative to pregenocide levels. Given the established relationships between symptoms of depression/traumatic stress and interpersonal violence, improving mental health is important for both preventing mental health decompensation and stemming future cycles of intra- and intergroup conflict.

Southern Refugee Legal Advocacy Network (SRLAN)

In countries around the world, there are increasing numbers of new organizations and programs aimed at provided rights-based advocacy for refugees. Many of these programs focus on legal aid and counseling, while others are concerned with research, monitoring and policy advocacy. All such organizations are bound by a common desire to root refugee assistance in human rights and international law. These rights-based organization have often been unique within their own countries and isolated from each other internationally. Organization face common challenges, but opportunities to learn from each other's experiences are not fully developed. At a global level, refugee advocacy is dominated by large humanitarian agencies. But slowly and informally, rights-based refugee organizations have been increasing their cooperation, information sharing and coordinated advocacy. This charter is initiated in hopes of transforming the disparate refugee rights organizations into a global movement to expand and improve the protection of refugees in parts of the world where focus on refugee rights has been lacking. To implement this vision, this network of organizations will work collaboratively and in concert to strengthen and expand our rights bases refugee advocacy and legal aid both globally and locally.

MARIA CRISTINA GARCIA. Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, The United States, and Canada. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2006. Pp. xvi, 273. $19.95

María Cristina García's book eloquently explains the various factors that shaped the experience of over two million Central American refugees in Mexico, the United States, and Canada from 1970 to the 1990s. Blaming the Cold War for driving people out of their countries, García explains how government officials and pro-immigrant advocates in religious institutions and nonprofit organizations shaped responses to the Central American refugee crisis. According to García, government officials in North America conveniently politicized their initial responses to strengthen their own foreign or domestic agendas but left few venues for legalizing the status of Central American immigrants. As a response, activists mobilized national and transnational networks to establish refugee assistance programs, inject public debates with moral consciousness, and advocate humane immigration policies. García accurately concludes that Mexico's effort to present itself as a middle power in hemispheric affairs and a negotiator in the Central American peace process, and the country's pride in accommodating refugees, all shaped Mexican immigration policies. Its depiction as a regional leader, an autonomous broker, and a social democratic nation that welcomed exiles was central to postrevolutionary Mexico after the 1920s. In line with this process, García's conclusion that the establishment of the Mexican Committee for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) in the 1980s offered inadequate aid for Central American refugees makes sense. COMAR functioned as a government institution that showed Mexico's regional leadership and autonomy from the United States, two critical factors for strengthening the power of the state in Mexico since the 1920s. In practice, according to García, the Mexican Government failed to protect Central American refugees because it made them “pawns of foreign policy decisions” (p. 10). However, García makes a distinction between state policy and the response from Mexican citizens, praising those who mobilized, offered refugee assistance, and pressured government officials to keep Mexico a safe haven for refugees. Criticism from refugee advocates forced the Mexican government to re-examine its policy as the country's “credibility and moral authority in the Central American peace initiatives, as well as in migratory issues related to its northern boundary, became dependent on its response to the migration across its southern border” (pp. 46–47).

Status of women and infants in complex humanitarian emergencies

Women and children bear the greatest burden in the midst of war and long-term disasters. Complex humanitarian emergencies are characterized by social disruption, armed conflict, population displacement, collapse of public health infrastructure, and food shortages. Humanitarian assistance for refugees and internally displaced populations requires particular attention to the common issues affecting morbidity and mortality in women and infants. Gender-based violence and reproductive health concerns are discussed within the context of populations affected by conflict and forced migration. Recommendations for midwives and women's health care providers engaging in care for women and children in complex humanitarian emergencies are discussed.

The journey to wellness: stages of refugee health promotion and disease prevention.

Refugees experience a threefold challenge to their health and well-being: 1) psychiatric disorders precipitated by the refugee experience, 2) infectious and parasitic diseases endemic to countries of origin, and 3) chronic diseases endemic to host countries. This paper documents the "journey to wellness" in which these challenges are faced in stages by the refugees themselves and by the array of health and social service agencies committed to providing refugee assistance. Using the experience of a consortium of agencies in San Diego as an example, we examine the interaction between these challenges and the mobilization of organizations to develop a program of health promotion and disease prevention for Somali and other East African refugees. This mobilization involves a series of steps designed to facilitate refugee confidence, comprehension, and compliance with prevention efforts through community-provider partnerships and negotiation between refugee and organizational explanatory models of disease causation and prevention.

Voluntarism and Conservative Pluralism: Reconsidering Jewish Refugee Assistance on the British Home Front 1939-44

This article reassesses the treatment of Jewish refugees by the state in the context of a structural analysis of the 'corporate bias', or conservative pluralism underpinning administrative practices in mid-twentieth century Britain. Forms of segmented management are diagnosed, where conscious prejudices and ideological convictions concerning Jews are elusive. The analysis focuses on the mechanisms of income support and other maintenance assistance. The conservative interaction between government departments and voluntary bodies is identified as crucial in the management, control and concealment of Jewish refugees.

(Human) security dilemmas: Long-term implications of the Afghan refugee crisis

Large-scale refugee movements clearly pose a threat to human, state, and societal security. Balancing the different levels of security threats is difficult. The case of the Afghan refugees is interesting, as (forced) migration was not linked to security until years after the initial displacement, and during a time when refugee numbers were not at their peak. Furthermore, countries with smaller numbers of refugees felt more threatened than those bearing the bulk. This article sets out to explore this interesting security puzzle, trying to answer the question whether the South Asian security dilemma can be linked to migration and displacement in the region, or other factors. The article concludes that a security-migration linkage seems to be based more on the duration than the size of displacement. Furthermore, policies by regional and international actors toward Afghan refugees contributed to the development of refugee warrior communities linked to state and international security concerns. Finally, power politics and geo-strategic as well as economic interests also contributed to the security dilemma. All these factors need to be considered in future refugee assistance in order to assume that human security is not sacrificed for that of states, and that the victims (refugees) are not the only ones held responsible.