United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees Research Articles

Raw Material: UNHCR’s Individual Case Files as a Historical Source, 1951–75

Abstract This article contributes to the emerging field of refugee history by inviting a consideration of the extensive holdings of the Records and Archives Division of the Geneva-based Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It focuses on a sample of confidential case files created in the quarter-century following the launch of UNHCR to determine whether an individual was eligible for recognition and thus for protection and assistance under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The postwar international refugee regime was selective and biased towards refugees of European origin, but UNHCR increasingly engaged with non-European refugees, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. A close study of the case files concerning refugees in different sites of displacement raises questions about the power vested in the new institution and the circumstances in which refugees sought access to UNHCR. Against the backdrop of Cold War and decolonization the article also engages with issues around the archive, ‘access’ and ‘disclosure’: not only the terms of the encounter between refugees and officialdom, but the privileged access of scholars to confidential records and by extension to material that discloses intimate aspects of refugee lives.

SURİYE MÜLTECİ GÖÇÜNÜN TÜRKİYE’YE EKONOMİK ETKİLERİ

The aim of this study is to analyze such impacts on inflation, unemployment rate, economic development, and housing demand as from 2011. For this reason, the subject of this research is defined as “The Impact of Syrian Refugees on Turkish Economy”. Within this frame, “Is migration an economic and demographic solution for the ageing population and work force due to sector specific supply deficiencies?”, or “Could migration be deemed as a risk due to additional burden on social savings and public finance, increase of general price levels, and increased unemployment?” have been determined as the primary problems of this paper.
 We researched and analyzed the number of Syrian refugees, economic growth, unemployment rate, housing demand, and overall level of prices in between 2012 – 2019 based on the quarterly data. Total statistical information, relevant to Syrian refugees, was obtained from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and rest of the data was obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). In order to make the analysis of Syrian refugees with respect to the Turkish Economy, we primarily used the parameter of time. Hence, the research was performed both for short and long terms. And we used Johansen cointegration, Granger causality, VAR (Vector Autoregressive Model), and Impulse-Response function models. Based on the results obtained, there are no negative impacts on the Turkish economy in the short term, yet negative impacts will be faced in the long term. As a result, the increase of the number of refugees is significantly affecting the unemployment rate, and it is actually creating a horizontal effect on inflation and housing demand. We finalized the research by the results of the analyses performed as well as the contribution of political designs’ and key feedbacks’ projections.

Exploring possibilities of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ integration with churches in refugee response

The refugee crisis has been an ongoing global challenge. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the international body that is mandated to protect refugees. However, in undertaking its function, it involves many stakeholders such as refugee communities, civil society actors, government entities, non-governmental organisations, other United Nations agencies and the church; thus ensuring effective interventions. With this in mind, it is sought in this article to understand how the UNHCR involved or integrated churches in its approach to intervention in refugee crises, as some churches had evidently become community bulwarks and safe havens for refugees. In order to accomplish the aforementioned objective, literature pertinent to the subject is reviewed. It commenced by discussing the UNHCR’s approach to intervention in and responses to the refugee crisis, and this was followed by the identification and discussion of the UNHCR’s interventions in which the churches were meaningfully involved to optimise their response to refugee crises. In discussing this role and the approach of the UNHCR, the extent is revealed to which the churches’ involvement or integration in the refugee agency’s approach to intervention in the refugee crisis was limited. Notably, this limitation was exacerbated by, among many others, the key sticking issues that could be the barriers or challenges in preventing the integration of churches in the UNHCR’s responses to migration crises and vice versa. Although there were sticking issues that hampered the UNHCR’s integration of churches in its approach to intervention in the refugee crisis, the article is concluded by identifying and discussing some existing opportunities that may further strengthen the existing UNHCR–Church intervention approaches to the crises. Among many others, formal UNHCR–Church collaborations were found to be critical in strengthening their mutual efforts to ameliorate the refugee crisis, as they could complement each other in providing effective and comprehensive interventions.Contribution: The major contribution of this article is that it examined the responses of the UNHCR and the church to the refugee crisis. Notably, embedded in this was the assessment of how the UNHCR was integrating churches in its approach to intervention in refugee crises. Consequently, this resulted in the identification and discussion of opportunities that may further strengthen the existing UNHCR–Church intervention approaches to the aforementioned humanitarian crisis.

Sudanese Refugees and the “Syrian Refugee Response” in Lebanon: Racialised Hierarchies, Processes of Invisibilisation, and Resistance

Abstract By focusing on Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers in Lebanon, who in 2018 constituted 4 per cent of all persons of concern to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in that country, this article explores how the UNHCR protects and assists refugees not encompassed by the mainstream humanitarian response. The article finds that in terms of refugee recognition, resettlement, and overall protection, Sudanese refugees receive differential treatment when compared with the more dominant refugee groups. More precisely, it argues that the humanitarian practices contribute to structural processes of invisibilisation of the particularities of the protection concerns and circumstances of Sudanese refugees. It spotlights how, while racism and racial discrimination remain major protection concerns for the Sudanese community in Lebanon, humanitarian vulnerability assessments are altogether blind to these categories of harm. In examining how Sudanese refugees respond to and resist such processes of invisibilisation, the article also examines two key collective action approaches through which Sudanese refugees seek to access better protection and assistance: the establishment of representative refugee committees, on the one hand, and refugee protest, on the other. It finds that refugee protest was an important means of countering humanitarian processes of invisibilisation.

Defining Adjustment to Address the Missing Link between Refugees and Their Resettlement Communities.

Background: data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that, in 2020, among 82.4 million refugees, only 251,000 returned to their home countries, indicating the desire for refugees to stay, for the long-term, in their new homelands. The paper contributes to the scientific–psychological debate on the social representation of refugee populations, by studying this population, not simply as “foreigners”, traumatized and resourceless people, but rather focusing on the factors that lead to their positive adjustments within local communities. Method: a scoping review was carried out to explore the phenomenon of adjustment (RQ1) and to identify the factors that foster adjustment among refugees and their resettlement communities (RQ2). A research protocol and eligibility criteria were defined prior to conducting the literature research through the Scopus database. Afterwards, data charting and items were conducted to organize the results. Results: a process of data mapping outlined three dimensions of adjustment—psychological, social, and scholastic. In addition, six macro factors emerged that ease refugee adjustments—context characteristics, time, social integration markers, acculturation, social support, and psychological capital. Results show that adjustment is the result of the inter-relations among sociological and psychological factors. Conclusions: the lack of studies addressing the inner resources of refugees and community participation confirms that research in this field needs a change of paradigm, to identify the resources that refugees use to adjust to their new communities and promote their development.

Implementing and Interpreting Refugee Resettlement Through a Veil of Secrecy: A Case of LGBT Resettlement From Africa

In the last decade the number of countries aiming to resettle refugees increased and complementary pathways aiming to relocate humanitarian migrants expanded. Stakeholders in charge of the selection process of candidates and logistical organization of these programs multiplied as a consequence. Because refugee resettlement and complementary pathways are not entrenched in international law, selection processes and logistical organization are at the discretion of stakeholders in charge, sometimes hardly identifiable themselves, and can vary greatly from one scheme to another. For displaced candidates to resettlement and complementary pathways, this opacity can have dramatic consequences in regions of origin. This article will present the case of a group of African lesbian and gay asylum seekers who first sought asylum in a neighboring country, hoping for resettlement to the global North. Because their first country of asylum criminalizes homosexuality, the responsible regional office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) must circumvent the said country’s sovereignty on asylum matters and recognize LGBT asylum seekers as refugees under UN mandate before submitting their cases to resettlement countries. UNHCR agents thus conduct refugee status determination (RSD) and resettlement procedures behind a veil of secrecy, at the risk of antagonizing their local partners and confusing aspiring refugees. Meanwhile, INGOs from the global North cooperate with local LGBT associations to relocate LGBT Africans out of the same African countries. This paper will show African asylum asylum seekers’ efforts to qualify for all these programs simultaneously, unaware of the mutually exclusive aspects of some; to become visible to institutions and “sponsors” they deem more powerful, at the expense of solidarity within their group.

Multicultural competencies training programs for health care staff and health students in academic and professional settings: a scoping review protocol.

The aim of the proposed scoping review is to identify training programs in multicultural competencies for health care staff and health students in professional and academic settings. Cultural competence training for health care professionals is an imperative challenge in today's culturally diverse societies to ensure that all people receive equitable and effective health care, particularly those from culturally diverse backgrounds. This scoping review will consider literature with adult participants aged ≥ 18 years, health care staff, and health students who may have received or are receiving multicultural competencies training. Literature published since 1960 in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French will be considered for inclusion. Literature will be excluded if it reports on multicultural competencies training programs for students outside the health domain or for non-professional high school programs. The search strategy, designed according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, will aim to find both published and unpublished literature. The following electronic databases will be searched: MEDLINE, CINAHL, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, Web of Science, Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal (RCAAP), and Open Grey. Other sites to be searched include ClinicalTrials.gov; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); International Organization for Migration (IOM); and International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe (IMISCOE). The screening process will consist of two steps carried out by two independent reviewers: firstly, screening by title and abstract; and secondly, by full text. Data will be charted to describe the body of literature according to the review research questions, which were defined following the Population, Concept, Context (PCC) mnemonic. Data will be presented graphically when possible, and accompanied by a narrative that describes the characteristics of the training programs.

GLOBAL SITUATION OF MIGRATION AND REFUGE

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warns that in 2020 we have reached the dramatic figure of 79.5 million forcibly displaced people in the world. The migration issue is currently one of the most worrying in terms of Human Rights. Over the past few years there has been an increase in armed conflicts in North Africa, especially bloody conflicts in Libya, Syria and where the Islamic State has intervened. These conflicts have put thousands of people in unsustainable living conditions in their countries of origin, so many of them have chosen to flee to Europe to protect their lives and that of their families. The International Society, and especially the European Union, in the middle of an economic and identity crisis, has been overwhelmed and has not managed to articulate a global strategy in order to resolve the delicate situation we are experiencing. At the global level, the United Nations has also tried to create a solution for managing migratory flows based on coordination and joint responsibility. However, it has only been able to approve a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration that is not obligatory, but voluntary. This research makes a descriptive and functional analysis of the legislation and public policies developed within the field of migration and refuge, with special attention to what refers to cooperation, integration and management of cultural diversity and development

The international governance of refugee work: reflections on the Jordan compact

For the past 70 years, separate international regimes have governed the economic lives of refugees and labor migrants. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) oversees all aspects of refugee resettlement, including livelihoods, while the International Labor Organization (ILO) is charged with addressing the labor rights of migrants. This division has become increasingly problematic as international actors have sought to move refugees into employment arenas from which they have been largely excluded since the end of WWII. This article uses a case study of the 2016 EU-Jordan Compact to illustrate the risks inherent in positioning refugees as workers in the absence of a commitment to a rights-based approach. The Compact was negotiated between the European Commission, the World Bank, and the Government of Jordan, in consultation with the UNHCR; the ILO played no role in crafting the agreement. It sought to place 150,000 Syrians in Jordanian garment export manufacturing jobs, replacing an existing migrant workforce in an industry notorious for low pay and poor conditions. This effort quickly foundered. Instead, large numbers of Syrian refugees have been channeled into informal employment in construction and agriculture in Jordan, where they and migrant co-workers face pervasive violations of labor standards. Without decent work as a central goal, the Compact ultimately concentrated some of the world’s most vulnerable workers in some of its least desirable jobs. To protect refugees and others alongside whom they labor, the article argues, refugee employment initiatives must be accompanied by attention to decent work from the outset. At the international level, this should include a critical role for the ILO, in recognition of its extensive expertise with the establishment and enforcement of labor standards for all workers.

Understanding risk factors and preventive measures of cardiovascular disease in refugee communities

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are more than 80 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide as of 2020. This number creates numerous challenges, including the...

When an Arab State Entered into International Refugee Instruments: Behind the Scenes of Egypt’s Accession to the 1951 Refugee Convention

AbstractThis article explores why Egypt, unlike the majority of Arab states in the Middle East, decided to accede to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) in 1981. Drawing on both primary and secondary source information, this article investigates the process of relevant negotiations between the Egyptian state and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The article’s historical analysis finds that Egypt’s major foreign policy reforms in the late 1970s became a key trigger for the country’s growing rapport with the UNHCR and the regime of the 1951 Convention. Yet, it is also argued that the UNHCR and pro-Western foreign ministry officials of Egypt played a pivotal role in leading to the successful outcome. Expanding on the state’s foreign policy rationale, this article provides useful insights into the conditions under which a previously reluctant state, like Egypt, could eventually become a party to the 1951 Convention.

How do refugees navigate the UNHCR’s bureaucracy? The role of rumours in accessing humanitarian aid and resettlement

In conflict situations, rapid changes can occur in the conditions in both host and home countries. In the context of such uncertainty, how do refugees navigate the bureaucratic apparatus of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to obtain humanitarian aid and resettlement? We carried out fieldwork in 2019 in Lebanon and found the UNHCR’s bureaucracy to be a ‘black box’ for refugees in relation to the provision of information on humanitarian aid and resettlement. In this context of limited information, we found that rumours – widely considered to be uncertain truths – contributed to shaping participants’ understanding of the UNHCR’s decisions on the provision of aid and resettlement. In this article, we highlight the interpretive aspect of rumours and argue that refugees engage in interpretive labour as a result of the unequal relationship between themselves and the UNHCR’s opaque bureaucracy and provision of information. While refugees have to provide the UNHCR with detailed and highly personal information in interviews and household inspections, officers provide refugees with only generic responses, leading refugees to make their own interpretations of the bureaucratic decision-making processes. We conceptualise this interpretive labour as a collective process that contributes to generating rumours among refugee groups.

INEFFECTIVE REFUGEE STATUS DETERMINATION PROCESS: HINDRANCE TO DURABLE SOLUTION FOR REFUGEES RIGHTS AND PROTECTION

In any State of Asylum, the process of Refugee Status Determination (RSD) conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is critical in facilitating asylumseekers to seek necessary protections. UNHCR ensures that asylum-seekers will not be returned involuntarily to the State of Origin where they could face persecution. As a long-term solution, UNHCR helps refugees to find appropriate and permanent solutions to their plights, either by repatriating them voluntarily to their homeland or assisting them to integrate into the States of Asylum or helping them to resettle in third States. In the absence of domestic legal protection in dealing with the refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia, a variety of operations are executed by UNHCR, including the admission, registration, documentation, and status determination of asylum seekers and refugees. To prevent the deportation of individuals qualified for international protection, UNHCR should reassess its RSD process in Malaysia, and consider alternative means that would be less burdensome and less risky for people who are fleeing violence and human rights violations. Primarily aimed at reassessing the RSD process in Malaysia using a doctrinal and comparative approach, the analysis is presented in four parts in this article. The first part provides for the definition and current statistics of refugee and asylum-seekers in Malaysia; the second part examines the mechanism of RSD conducted by UNHCR under international law; the third part focuses on how RSD operates in Malaysia; the last part reviews the mechanism of RSD in Indonesia and Brazil.

Rohingya refugee resettlement as a community of practice

AbstractThe following article argues that community development practices in conjunction with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) resettlement process can be analysed and enhanced through the application of the Community of Practice social learning theory. This work is elucidated by critical reflections on community development by and with the Rohingya community in Ireland. Analysis of practices with this cohort is urgent given the wider context of the on-going humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. The Community of Practice here is conceptualised as the partners, stakeholders and agencies in addition to members of the Rohingya community that each practices community development. The article provides an overview of the resettlement process for the Rohingya before applying the model across its four components—community, practice, meaning and identity. Conclusions include the recognition that community development approaches of collaboration and partnership at the heart of the resettlement process equate to a Community of Practice model. This is described here as interdependent, in part, to distinguish this approach from the stated UNHCR goal of independence. Secondly, a longitudinal approach to strategy is supported by Community of Practice theory through processes of reiteration, reification and participation. Finally, Community of Practice theory informs concepts of identity and community to argue in favour of diverse and flexible goal setting.

Is Voluntary Repatriation the Preferred Durable Solution? The View of Refugees in South Africa

Voluntary repatriation as the preferred durable solution for refugees has attracted much scholarly attention and the existing literature highlights the complexities of the process. This paper attempts to answer the question of when return can be considered as truly voluntary and preferred. To answer this question, the paper considers reasons offered by refugees themselves. The percentage of voluntary repatriation applications by refugees living in South Africa is low in relation to the number of refugees living in the country. However, reasons why refugees might choose to repatriate are still worthy of interrogation if we are to truly establish whether it is a preferred solution. Refugees’ answers illustrate that they are not always completely free to make choices. They may indicate consent, but consent does not necessarily indicate a preference. This paper incorporates a study which reveals that refugees choosing to repatriate from South Africa are indeed very small in number, despite the vigorous attempts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at promoting voluntary repatriation. It further reveals that this can be partly attributed to the fact that in an urban setting such as South Africa with a rights-based framework, refugees are often able to better integrate into their host society without the direct assistance of the UNHCR as they would do in a camp-based setting. As such, assumptions that voluntary repatriation is a preferred durable solution for all refugees, need to be interrogated.

Establish ASEAN-AUSTRALIA Communication In Resolving Humanitarian Issues For International Asylum Seekers and Refugees

The current problem of refugees cannot be handled with policies that address the root of the problem. The increasing number of refugees in the Southeast Asian region makes transit countries overwhelmed in dealing with this problem. On the other hand, as a refugee recipient country in the last ten years, Australia has had a strict policy in accepting refugees. Australia's approach to return refugee ships to a transit country is a controversial policy because Australia itself is a country that signed the 1951 convention on refugee status. On the other hand, the existence of refugees and asylum seekers has a significant impact on the local community's social changes, and the current refugee policy arrangement is still in the hands of UNHCR ( United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) under the auspices of the United Nations. There has been no concrete communication to touch the root of the problem of refugees and asylum seekers. Through an enthusiastic approach and communication with community-based management between ASEAN countries and Australia, it is hoped that it can resolve human rights issues related to supervision to empower refugees in society to become citizens of a third country, in this case, Australia.

Anatomy of a Misfit: International Migration Statistics

Migration is one of the key aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To understand global migration patterns, develop scenarios, design effective policies, focus on the population’s needs, and identify how these needs change over time, we need accurate, reliable and timely data. The gaps in international migration data have persisted since international organizations collect data. To improve the data gaps, there is a need to conceptualize the types of gaps and pinpoint the gaps within the international data systems. To that end, the ultimate objective of this paper is twofold, (i) to review and categorize the gaps in the literature and (ii) assess the statistical data sources, i.e., United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs (UN DESA), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), International Organization for Migration (IOM), Eurostat, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Our results demonstrate that the gaps could be categorized under (1) definitions and measures, (2) drivers or reasons behind migration, (3) geographic coverage, (4) gaps in demographic characteristics and (5) the time lag in the availability of data. The reviewed sources suffer from the gaps, which are not mutually exclusive (they are interlinked): the quality and availability of both migration flows and stocks data vary across regions and countries, and migration statistics highly rely on immigrants’ arrival.

Humanitarianism, securitization, and containment in Jordan's Za'atari Refugee Camp.

Through a case study on Za'atari, the largest Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, this paper critically explores a contemporary example of intersection between local and global humanitarian and securitization processes in refugee governance. The paper argues that Syrian refugees have been subjected to humanitarian care and securitized treatment, with their construction in terms of potential threat to State security interests spiking in correlation with insecurities over the expansion of the "Islamic State" (IS). The paper tracks the suit of measures implemented by the host Jordanian State, with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to produce docile refugee subjects of "humanitarian government" in a closed camp. It notes how the UNHCR invariably augments and extends the remit of Jordanian State power at the expense of refugee rights, in the name of ensuring refugee and aid worker security and the effectiveness of the aid operation. The camp plays a critical role in a performative politics of containment targeting local and global audiences.

Complejidades y contradicciones de la política migratoria hacia la migración venezolana en el Perú

Section:ChooseTop of pageAbstract <<Introducción1.La nueva ley migratoria...2.La regularización como ...3.La política de asilo pe...ConclusionesReferencias

Topic modelling on archive documents from the 1970s: global policies on refugees

Abstract This study conducts a historical analysis of global policies on refugees within typewritten and digitally born documents (c. 55,000 pages) from international and national archives. The data originate from the 1970s and are stored in archives from the UK and US governments, plus the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The overarching theme is to analyse the involvement of the UK, the USA, and the UNHCR in different refugee cases that occurred during the 1970s. To do so, we (1) identify the main topics in each document; (2) investigate the transmission of topics horizontally (between organizations) and vertically (through time); and (3) suggest targeted areas of the document set for further close reading by historians. Standard Optical Character Recognition and object detection are used to extract information from documents and categorize them. Then, natural language processing (NLP) methods like topic modelling and clustering are used to identify topics and the relationships between them across time. The results identify several main themes covered by different organizations and how the focus of each organization changes diachronically. Besides its academic contribution, this study also demonstrates how, through the use of existing techniques with limited customization, digital technologies in the hands of the historian can augment and complement qualitative methods in bringing to light the themes and trends demonstrated in large bodies of historical documents.