Refugees – what’s wrong with history?

Parallel session: Humanitarian Innovation and the Military 18 July 2015, 11:00-12:30, 1st Panel Room. Nathaniel Raymond, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, James Ryan, University of London. Chair: Josiah Kaplan, Humanitarian Innovation Project. Military and humanitarian actors increasingly interact across a range of contexts, from natural disaster response to complex emergencies. To date, however, sensitive but important questions surrounding knowledge creation, diffusion, and exchange between both communities remain under-explored, both in debates on humanitarian innovation and humanitarian civil-military coordination. This panel seeks to prompt critical discussion around a sensitive topic by examining how innovative forms of knowledge are created, diffused, and exchanged between military and humanitarian space. How do aid workers learn, adapt, and 'rebrand' military innovations for civilian use? To what degree are military actors adapting humanitarian concepts and practices for their own use? What sensitivities and dilemmas do such interactions pose for both humanitarian practice and principles? This discussion will be grounded in concrete case studies drawn from medical humanitarianism and emerging approaches to networked technologies such as remote sensing and mapping.

Parallel session: Understanding Humanitarian Innovation in Resettlement Contexts, 18 July 2015, 11:0--12:30, 2nd Panel Room. Gavin Ackerly, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Innovation Hub: ‘Innovative ways of creating resource rich networks to support successful refugee resettlement’, Faith Nibbs, Southern Methodist University: ‘Innovative Strategies: How refugees have career-laddered in the US’, Eleanor Ott, Oxfam GB: ‘‘Forced’ innovation: A case study of US refugee resettlement’, Carrie Perkins, Southern Methodist University: ‘The Road to Resettlement: Transitions from the Thai-Burma border to Dallas, Texas’. Chair: Naohiko Omata, Humanitarian Innovation Project This panel will consider how the concept of humanitarian innovation can apply to refugees who have been resettled to third countries. The first presentation will introduce a purpose-built e-mentoring and networking project which connects refugees to industry professionals, small business mentors and peer groups in order to give refugees the opportunity to connect deep within mainstream networks, reducing reliance on service agencies and increasing opportunities for prosperity. The second presentation will address how refugees career-ladder when their skills don’t easily transfer to the country of resettlement, presenting some of the innovative strategies refugees have used over the past 30 years in the US gathered through ethnographic interviews of the refugee communities of Dallas, TX area. The third presentation will explore how resettled refugees use and build their own networks to relocate, acquire employment, and find economic and social support, presenting qualitative and quantitative data on resettled refugee livelihood adaptation from findings of research with resettled refugees, practitioners, and policymakers. The fourth presentation will use qualitative interviews from refugees both preparing for resettlement and those who have already made the transition to life in the U.S to explore the many challenges, struggles and successes encountered along the way.

Parallel session: Facilitating Bottom-Up Innovation, 18 July 2015, 13:34-15:15, 2nd Panel Room Gavin Ackerly, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Innovation Hub, Robert Hakiza, Young African Refugees for Integral Development (YARID) Uganda, Avila Kilmurray, Global Fund for Community Foundations, Olivia O’Sullivan, Innovation Hub, DFID, Amplify Project. Chair: Louise Bloom, Humanitarian Innovation Project. This session centres on the fact that the humanitarian sector still has a lot to learn about fully engaging with crisis-affected communities in innovation practice. However several initiatives have started to support communities’ skills and ideas for new humanitarian solutions. Through a lively conversation with the panel members, this session will introduce the exciting work that has created hubs, funds and other platforms to support community-led innovation around the world. We will learn what some of the successes and challenges have been in facilitating grassroots initiatives, and ask what the future is for more direct involvement of crisis-affected communities in providing innovative solutions to humanitarian challenges. With a panel representing a range of global perspectives we hope to unpack some of the key lessons to good innovation facilitation.

Parallel session: Ethics for Technology and Big Data in Humanitarian Innovation 17 July 2015, 14:00-15:30, 1st Panel Room. Nathaniel Raymond, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s Signal Program: ‘Applying Humanitarian Principles to the Collection and Use of Digital Data in order to Identify and Mitigate Potential Risks to Vulnerable Populations’, Stefan Voigt, DLR Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information, and Josh Lyons, Human Rights Watch: ‘Between transparency and sensitivity: considerations on the use of very high resolution satellite mapping technologies for humanitarian operations and human rights investigations’ Chair: Anaïs Rességuier, Sciences Po Paris. This panel will discuss ethical issues and risks specific to the application of new and existing technologies and the collection of ‘big data’ for humanitarian purposes. The first presentation will identify potential risk vectors and models of prospective harm that may stem from current data collection practices through digital platforms, which is increasingly for humanitarian practice, and will provide examples of scenarios where this harm may occur and applying commonly accepted sources of humanitarian principles. The second presentation will give an insight in the current and up‐coming state‐of‐the‐art of satellite technology and will stimulate a discussion on how the geospatial community can navigate future policy debates in a balanced and informed way.

Parallel session: Community-based Food Production in Humanitarian Contexts 18 July 2015, 13:45-15:15. Panellists; Mikey Tomkins, CitizenD: ‘Refugee communities in Dallas: Develop community based urban agriculture in Vickery Meadow’ This panel will consider the role of community-based initiatives and innovations for food production as a way of addressing food security issues in refugee and other humanitarian situations. This presentation focuses on the ongoing work of Citizen-D in Dallas, Texas, a project which is in its first year, and aims to create, support and promote urban food growing projects within the refugee communities in Dallas.

Parallel session: Humanitarian Innovation: How to balance short-term results with long-term vision? 17 July 2015, 14:00-15:30. Panellists Kim Scriven, Humanitarian Innovation Fund, Pascal Daudin, ICRC, Johan Karlsson, Better Shelter. Chair: Marpe Tanaka, MSF Sweden Innovation Unit. For emergency-oriented organisations in the humanitarian sector, responding quickly to rapidly emerging crisis situations is absolutely crucial. However, a major challenge facing humanitarian organizations is how to maintain a balance between addressing short-term needs and building an innovation capability to meet long-term challenges. The emergency-oriented mind-set often leads to prioritization of short-term problem solving and neglects the exploration of long-term challenges and opportunities for innovation. This panel brings together representatives from MSF Sweden Innovation Unit, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, the ICRC and Better Shelter to discuss how to successfully achieve a balance between the short-term and the long-term, and to explore the role of patience and trust in creating a sustained innovation capability in humanitarian organizations.

A panel discuss the deal between the EU and Turkey regarding immigration

Peter Gatrell gives a talk for the Refugee Studies Centre podcast series.

Guy Goodwin-Gill gives a talk for the Refugee Studies Centre podcast series. In 1977, as national refugee status determination procedures were gaining new life, State members of UNHCR’s Executive Committee asked the Office to provide guidance on the interpretation and application of the 1951 Convention/1967 Protocol. The outcome was the 1979 UNHCR Handbook, still widely cited in courts around the world, but substantially unchanged notwithstanding successive ‘re-issues’. Following adoption of its Agenda for Protection in 2000, UNHCR sought to keep up with jurisprudential developments and emergent issues by publishing supplementary guidelines, for example, on exclusion, gender, social group, and children; these were mostly drafted in-house, like the original Handbook, and without any formal input from States or other stakeholders. Following criticism of its 2013 guidelines on military service, however, UNHCR began to consider how external input could be usefully and effectively managed, for example, through the circulation of drafts for comment. Authoritative and influential guidelines will need a solid methodology when it comes to synthesizing best practice and pointing the way ahead, and UNHCR cannot just rely on its statutory and treaty role in ‘supervising the application’ of the 1951 Convention. In some respects, its task is analogous to that of the International Law Commission, incorporating both codification (identifying where States now see the law) and progressive development (showing how the law should develop consistently, if protection is to keep in step with need). So, what are the issues on which further guidance is needed today? What, if any, are the limits to interpretation, and when are new texts required? In drafting guidelines, who should be consulted? And how should others’ views and analysis be taken into account?

Dr James Milner gives a talk for the Refugee Studies Centre seminar series. Despite the attention paid to new examples of ‘global refugee policy’, we know surprisingly little about the process by which it is made and implemented. Building on the December 2014 special issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies, this seminar introduces the concept of ‘global refugee policy’ and argues for a more critical and systematic examination of the interests and actors that shape the process of making and implementing policy. Drawing on efforts to implement global policy with respect to protracted refugee situations in the context of Tanzania, the seminar considers the range of national and local factors that limited efforts to realise naturalisation for Burundian refugees, and outlines an approach to the future study of global refugee policy.