Typologies of conflict and categories of civilians

Two recent publications caught our eye:

• The International Review of the Red Cross publishes an issue focussing on the legal classification of armed conflict, increasingly vital in the growing number complex contexts in which the Movement works which do not fit the classic definitions of war between state actors
• HPG's new report 'Realising Protection' looks at the meaning and implications of three categories of protected status for non-combatants – ‘civilian’, ‘refugee’ and ‘internally displaced’ – and the frameworks of international law and custom and 'shifting political priorities and engagement by governments and regional and international actors' which surround them. Ultimately, they argue, 'it is the observance or otherwise of basic protection rules and norms by national and international duty-bearers that has the greatest impact on people’s safety, security and wellbeing'.

Running out of/on water?!

Several messages in the past week have highlighted the various ways in which water is becoming more and more a challenge in the lives of disaster-afflicted populations.
In Kenya, for example, the first climate change refugees have given up their herder life styles to settle down to make charcoal or sell firewood. Droughts in the country have gone up from once every decade up to almost every year. This gives nomades too little time to recover from losses suffered. In addition to the greater scarcity in drinking water, drought-induced hunger is more and more becoming a security concern in the country as well, with higher levels of violence reported.
In a similar vein, Timor Leste President Ramos-Horta warns for land-and-water wars in the near future, unless more attention will be paid to the rural areas that are more and more affected by the disastrous impacts of climate change.
On the other hand, several countries, notably in the Caribbean area, are hit by hurricanes and floods with greater intensity every year, said John Holmes, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. If no drastic reduction in carbon house emissions is negotiated at Copenhagen in December, he warns, these extreme water conditions (both the lack and abundance of it) will lead to unprecedented population movements, with high potential for conflict.
In a response to these threats, Reuters reports,

A 155-nation conference in Geneva agreed on a plan to improve climate information to help people cope with ever more droughts, floods, sandstorms and rising sea levels projected this century. The plan for a "Global Framework for Climate Services" includes the appointment of a task force of high-level, independent advisors within four months.

The panel's report is expected in twelve months, with recommendations on among others disaster risks, human health, transport and tourism, managing water, energy and securing food supplies.

IRIN: UNHCR faces urban challenges in assisting Iraqi refugees

A new report by UNHCR, Surviving in the City, reviews the agency's operations in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, assisting Iraqi refugees in urban areas, IRIN reports. UNHCR encountered many problems in reaching out to these refugees - a majority of them are not registered, so much of the assistance does not reach those in need. The urban environment poses operational challenges to the agency, as it cannot help the refugees as well as in camps.

The vulnerabilities cited by UNHCR include poverty, resorting to dangerous activities such as prostitution, physical and mental disabilities, and female-headed households whose main breadwinner has been killed in Iraq. [...]
The urban setting poses further challenges. For refugees these include high living costs - most of their money goes on shelter, says UNHCR; travelling long distances to reach registration centres, and problems accessing health and education services.

Attempts to adapt its strategies include a text messaging service to alert refugees of new food distributions and the handing out of ATM cards so that refugees can withdraw money locally rather than travelling to a UNHCR point.

Care, UN and Columbia University: Climate change forces new migration response

Climate change will force millions of people to leave their homes to flee rising seas and drought over the coming decades, requiring a new plan for mass migration, said a report published on Wednesday. Funds were needed to help migrants escape natural disasters which will worsen, threatening political stability, said the report published by the U.N. University, CARE International and Columbia University.

"Environmentally induced migration and displacement has the potential to become an unprecedented phenomenon -- both in terms of scale and scope," the study said. "In coming decades, climate change will motivate or force millions of people to leave their homes in search of viable livelihoods and safety."

The report said that the science of climate change was too new to forecast exact projected numbers of migrants, but it cited an International Organisation for Migration estimate of 200 million environmentally induced migrants by 2050.

Wednesday's study highlighted especially vulnerable regions of the world including: island states such as Tuvalu and the Maldives, dry areas such as Africa's Sahel and in Mexico, and delta regions in Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Egypt. "In the densely populated Ganges, Mekong, and Nile River deltas, a sea level rise of 1 metre could affect 23.5 million people and reduce the land currently under intensive agriculture by at least 1.5 million hectares," it said.

Read more on more on the Reuters website

Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming Evaluation

From It Begins With Me:

An 8 month evaluation of the strategy to consider persons of diverse age, gender and physical condition in planning and program (Age, Gender, Diversity Mainstreaming or AGDM) for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) begins this week [late March 2009]. In this video independent evaluators Virginia Thomas and Tony Beck join Naoko Obi, head of UNHCR’s Community Development, Gender Equality and Children Section, to discuss the mission, methodology and milestones for this comprehensive task.

BBI: Moving Beyond Rhetoric: Consultation and Participation with Populations Displaced by Conflict or Natural Disasters

UPDATE: Download an additional report, Listening to the Voices of the Displaced: Lessons Learned; author Roberta Cohen reviewed over 800 interviews with IDPs from different regions, stages of displacement and circumstances to analyze the concerns voiced by IDPs. The report is available from Reliefweb.

This desk study seeks to encourage reflection and debate on the benefits, limitations and risks of consultative and participatory approaches in working with communities displaced by both conflict and natural disasters.

It reviews previous experiences of consultation with internally displaced persons and others and explains why consultation is critical for both displaced communities and the agencies which work with them. Advantages of consultation and participation include both instrumental benefits, for example, better needs assessments, improved efficiency, implementation, and sustainability of projects; and value-based benefits, including empowerment and capacity building of affected communities.

Download the study from Reliefweb.

ODI: Opportunities and obstacles to the reintegration of IDPs and refugees returning to Southern Sudan

The long road home: Opportunities and obstacles to the reintegration of IDPs and refugees returning to Southern Sudan and the Three Areas

Profound changes are taking place in Southern Sudan as a result of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which brought to an end the 21 years civil war between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army.

This agreement has made possible substantial improvements in freedom of movement, trade and oil revenue, dramatically reduced conflict and laid the foundations of a system of governance to administer the south’s own affairs. Demographics and social relations are radically changing from wartime patterns.

But peace has also given rise to uncertainties about the future. Though progress has been remarkable in some areas, the challenges of managing the transition of rebuilding Southern Sudan and the border areas remain considerable.

This latest Humanitarian Policy Group study argues the next few years will be crucial to the future stability and prosperity of the region. As considerable numbers of people return, the pressure of reintegration mounts. Strategies must therefore urgently be put in place to address massive and rapid urbanisation, encourage civilians to disarm and provide opportunities for the sustainable use of natural resources, including land in urban areas. Infrastructure and markets also need development and equitable access to essential services must be put in place.

The study, commissioned by the governments of Canada and Denmark, is the second phase of a research project looking at one of the world's largest return and reintegration processes.

Download the report, or a synthesis, from the HPG website.

Forced Migration Review No. 31 - Climate Change and Displacement

Forced Migration Review provides a forum for the regular exchange of practical experience, information and ideas between researchers, refugees and internally displaced people, and those who work with them.

Contents include...

- Human security policy challenges, by Andrew Morton, Philippe Boncour and Frank Laczko.
- Island evacuation, by Ilan Kelman.
- Social breakdown in Darfur, by Scott Edwards.
- Mobile indigenous peoples, by Troy Sternberg and Dawn Chatty.
- Rural-urban migration in Ethiopia, by James Morrissey.
- Adaptation and cooperation, by Britta Heine and Lorenz Petersen.
- Recovery and the rule of law: what have we learned?, by Kathleen Cravero.

Read more on the FMR website.

Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children: Disabilities among Refugees and Conflict-Affected Populations

This report is the culmination of a six-month project commissioned by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and co-funded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to address the rights and needs of displaced persons with disabilities, with a particular focus on women (including older women), children and youth. Based on field research in five refugee situations, as well as global desk research, the Women’s Commission sought to map existing services for displaced persons with disabilities, identify gaps and good practices and make recommendations on how to improve services, protection and participation for displaced persons with disabilities. The objective of the project was to gather initial empirical data and produce a Resource Kit that would be of practical use to UN and nongovernmental organization (NGO) field staff working with displaced persons with disabilities.

Access the report via Reliefweb.

IOM Migration Research Series No. 33: Climate Change and Migration: Improving Methodologies to Estimate Flows

This paper is concerned with the question of trying to further the understanding of how different types of shocks and stresses caused by climate change influence different types of migration. The relationship between climate change and migration is currently a topic of great interest as the ongoing “environmental refugee” debate demonstrates. Proponents of the concept of “environmental refugees” argue that climate change will increase the severity and the frequency of extreme weather events, which will in turn cause the displacement of the majority of the population of affected areas. As a consequence, hundreds of millions of “environmental refugees” from vulnerable regions all over the world are expected to seek refuge in wealthier countries.

This approach is potentially misleading for a number of reasons. First, the consequences of changes in climate patterns are diverse, ranging from slow-onset phenomena such as rising sea levels and melting glaciers, to increased extreme events that occur suddenly, and at variable intervals such as tropical cyclones and floods. It is likely that these heterogeneous manifestations of climate change will affect people’s livelihoods in different ways. Second, people might make use of a variety of different coping strategies in response to these different shocks and stresses. It is not clear whether and under what conditions migration is one of them. Third, migration decisions are complex with respect to destination, length of stay, and the profile of migrants. In addition, migration itself is a multi-causal phenomenon, making it difficult to isolate climate change related factors from other factors that cause people to move.

Access the paper via Reliefweb.

Fire safety in refugee/ IDP camps

Reports of fires in camps housing survivors of the 'Boxing Day' Tsunami three years ago prompted the BRE Trust to commission research into the problem. As the research progressed, it became clear that the same issues extended to other refugee camps, as Martin Shipp and Kelvin Annable explain.

It is estimated that over 187,000 people died, 115,000 houses were damaged or destroyed and around 1.7 million people were left homeless after the tsunami struck countries surrounding the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004. Immediately after the event, the BRE Trust funded a project on the needs of tsunami affected countries(ref 1).

In December 2005, a report made to the Disasters Emergency Committee2 stated that “the real cause for concern is the poor conditions in temporary shelter and the continuation of tented camps. In particular, these camps and shelters are at risk of fire, cyclone and flood”. It was separately reported by the BBC that the shelters provided to tsunami victims had poor fire performance. Further investigation on the web revealed that a number of tsunami camps had suffered major fires, some with loss of life.

Reported causes vary; some appear to be deliberate, some accidental, e.g. due to cooking or paraffin lamps. An initial examination of photographs of such camps suggested that fire spread between shelters should be easily limited by adequate spacing, with 5m or 6m spacing, as is done in the UK to protect mobile homes, for example. However, it was understood that practical, structural, environmental or social reasons might exist to explain why a solution could not, or is not, being adopted.

Read the rest on the Fire Safety Engineering magazine website! Thanks to Cathy for passing this on.

Small arms survey: The Chad–Sudan Proxy War and the 'Darfurization' of Chad: Myths and Reality

The contention that the Darfurian conflict is being 'exported' to eastern Chad via janjawid militia has received widespread coverage. However, this is a dangerous oversimplification of the ethnic and political dynamics of the region, and most especially neglects the importance of the political crisis in Chad.

Khartoum and N'Djamena have been engaged in an on-again, off-again proxy conflict using one another's rebel movements since the Darfur conflict began in 2003, most intensively since 2005. Khartoum has attempted on multiple occasions to unify the Chadian rebel groups to destabilize or even overthrow the Déby regime. While Déby has survived two attacks on the capital, he has managed to hold on to power through repression and incentives to those who rally to him.

This Working Paper provides the contextual and historical background for understanding the current Chad–Sudan conflict, its complex ethnic components, and the history of the Chadian rebel factions. The paper explains why the current international peacekeeping effort is unlikely to be successful without an accompanying diplomatic push to bring the Chadian opposition— both legal and armed—and the Déby regime to the negotiating table.

The working paper is available for download from Reliefweb.

Forced Migration Review: Humanitarian Reform, fulfilling its promise?

For those who believe in it, it’s about fixing things and improving on them. For the sceptics, it’s about changing things for the sake of change, or replacing one slightly dysfunctional system with another equally dysfunctional one. For those opposed to it, it’s about replacing systems that work (in spite of all their faults and weaknesses) with inappropriate ones that are bound to fail because they have been dreamt up by people in ivory towers who have little real understanding of the situation on the ground.

So it is with humanitarian reform: you have the believers, the sceptics and the opponents. Fortunately, the vast majority of humanitarian practitioners believe in the need for change and adaptation. They recognise the need to improve the way humanitarian organisations do business. They are all too aware of the continuing proliferation and sometimes fragmentation of humanitarian actors and the problems that arise when there is a lack of operational capacity, planning, predictability and coordination. They have seen what happens when some categories of people (such as the internally displaced) are not dealt with in a systematic way or when particular sectors receive inadequate attention. They are all painfully aware of the failings that we have seen in recent years in places like the Congo, Darfur, Liberia and northern Uganda.

The package of humanitarian reforms put forward by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC)1 in 2005 and 2006 is ambitious and far-reaching. It falls into three main areas: first, achieving more adequate, flexible and timely humanitarian financing; second, strengthening the ‘Humanitarian Coordinator’ system; and third, ensuring more systematic and predictable attention to all the main sectors of response, in what has come to be known as the ‘Cluster Approach’.2 Underpinning all this is the need to strengthen our interface with governments and to forge stronger partnerships amongst humanitarian actors – particularly between UN and non-UN actors.
As with any reform process, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So the question now is whether or not the reforms are working.

Available for download from the Forced Migration Review website.

Independent: Conflict Zones

Today's Independent contains a special Conflict Zones pullout, timed to coincide with the Dispatches from Disasters Zones event that we're hosting at the Foreign Press Association today.

The eight-page pullout, produced in association with the ICRC, includes coverage of Red Cross work in Afghanistan, Somalia, Colombia and Israel and the Occupied Territories, as well as a piece on our refugee services in the UK. There is a special editorial headlined 'The need for an organisation as sure-footed as the Red Cross is now greater than ever'.

Iraq: Calls for a “Humanitarian Surge”

On 29^th November 2007, ODI/HPN hosted a discussion entitled “Responding to humanitarian needs in Iraq”. The two main speakers at this event were Agron Ferati, Iraq Country Director, International Medical Corps (IMC) and Peter Kessler, UNHCR.

Both speakers presented a very interesting analysis of the crisis and the humanitarian needs. This included the massive displacement of people both within and outside Iraq, the fact that this crisis affects everyone in Iraq, that women, children and minority groups are especially vulnerable and that with the huge numbers of people fleeing the country Iraq has now become the largest refugee crisis in the world (even larger than Darfur).

To illustrate this, UNHCR gave some approximate figures on displacement, (bearing in mind that these are very approximate as no one knows for sure the numbers affected): 4.5m Iraqis displaced in total, 2m in Iraq, 1.2m in Syria, 500-750k in Jordan, 80k in Egypt, 50k in Lebanon and 200k in the Gulf States. 1 in 7 Iraqis are now displaced. This is the biggest refugee crisis in the Middle East since 1948 and it is the biggest urban crisis that UNHCR has ever faced.

However, an interesting debate came from IMC who argued that due to the recent improvement in the security situation in Iraq, now was the time for a “humanitarian surge”. NGOs need to move in now, step up activities and get a presence on the ground whilst there is this window of opportunity. They argued that it was time to stop doing endless assessments as the situation changes so rapidly; assessments go out of date and are useless in a matter of weeks. Instead agencies need to get in there and do something to make a real difference to the lives of Iraqis. If Iraqi people see a direct difference to their lives this will increase chances of stability in the country.

IMC concluded that this humanitarian surge needs to happen now before the situation deteriorates again. IMC is able to operate because they gain acceptance from local communities and tribal elders and therefore advises that this strategy would also work for other NGOs. Concern was expressed by representatives from other agencies attending the talk regarding the overall insecurity and volatility of the country, plus the apparent lack of multilateral/bilateral funding available for agencies aiming to work in Iraq.

We will therefore have to watch and see over the coming months as to whether agencies heed this call for a “humanitarian surge”, whether the security situation improves enough to allow this and whether enough is done to actually make a difference to the lives of the millions of Iraqi people currently facing the world’s largest crisis.