Security and Displacement in Iraq: Responding to the Forced Migration Crisis

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kenyon Lischer
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
International Borders ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Militant Groups ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
International War

Since the 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque, 4.5 million Iraqis have fled their homes, and displacement has become a central strategy in the civil war. Militant groups have engineered these colossal population movements to consolidate their power and expand their territorial claims. As this crisis demonstrates, displacement can expand and intensify violence during a civil war. In addition, refugee flows increase the risk that conflict will spread across international borders. In some cases, refugee militarization can lead to international war and regional destabilization. Even if the displaced Iraqis do not join militant groups, their mere presence will exacerbate political tensions. To prevent the wide-scale militarization of the displaced Iraqis, donors and host states should heed the following policy recommendations. First, provide a massive infusion of humanitarian aid. Second, resist the temptation to build camps to house the displaced. Third, do not return the displaced people home against their will. Fourth, expand and expedite the resettlement process, especially for vulnerable Iraqis such as those who were once coalition employees.

Civil Wars and Displacement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayşe Betül Çelik
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Return Dynamics ◽  
Shed Light

The growing number of civil wars in the post-Cold War era has been accompanied by a rising number of forcibly displaced people, who either stay within the borders of their own countries, becoming internally displaced persons (IDPs), or cross borders to become refugees. Although many studies have been conducted on the reasons of conflict-induced displacement, various questions remain of interest for the scholars of international relations, especially questions pertaining but not limited to the (a) gendered aspects of conflict, displacement, and peace processes, (b) predicting possible future displacement zones, and (c) best political and social designs for returnee communities in post-civil war contexts. Most studies still focus on the negative consequences of forced migration, undermining how refugees and IDPs can also contribute to the cultural and political environment of the receiving societies. Considering that there is a huge variation in types of conflict, motivations for violence, and the resulting patterns of displacement within the category of civil war, more research on the actors forcing displacement, their intentions, and subsequent effects on return dynamics can benefit research in this field. Similarly, research on return and reconciliation needs to treat displacement and return as a continuum. Paying attention to conflict parties in civil war bears the potential for new areas of exploration whose outcomes can also shed light on policies for post-civil war construction and intergroup reconciliation.

scholarly journals Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature

2000 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Sambanis
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Physical Separation ◽  
Large N ◽  
Main Determinants ◽  
International War ◽  
Ethnic War

Theorists of ethnic conflict have argued that the physical separation of warring ethnic groups may be the only possible solution to civil war. They argue that without territorial partition and, if necessary, forced population movements the war cannot end and genocide is likely. Other scholars have counterargued that partition only replaces internal war with international war, that it creates undemocratic successor states, and that it generates tremendous human suffering. This debate has so far been informed by very few important case studies. This article uses a new data set on civil wars to identify the main determinants of war-related partitions and estimate their impact on democratization, on the probability that war will recur, and on low-level ethnic violence. This is the first large-N quantitative analysis of this topic, testing the propositions of partition theory and weighing heavily on the side of its critics. Most assertions of partition theorists fail to pass rigorous empirical tests. The article also identifies some determinants of democratization after civil war, as well as the determinants of recurring ethnic violence. These empirical findings are used to formulate an alternative proposal for ending ethnic violence.

Towards radiotherapy for uterine cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-62
Author(s):  
V. S. Gruzdeva
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Uterine Cancer ◽  
International War

The grave social disasters that have befallen our homeland in recent years first an international war, then a civil war, famine, epidemics have shielded us just as it happened abroad just as well as a true social scourge, which is uterine cancer.

A Spatial Model of Internal Displacement and Forced Migration

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200272095847
Author(s):  
Jon Echevarria-Coco ◽  
Javier Gardeazabal
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Geographical Proximity ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Country Size ◽  
The World ◽  
Displaced People

This article develops a spatial model of internal and external forced migration. We propose a model reminiscent of Hotelling’s spatial model in economics and Schelling’s model of segregation. Conflict is modeled as a shock that hits a country at certain location and generates displacement of people located near the shock’s location. Some displaced people cross a border, thus becoming refugees, while others remain as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The model delivers predictions about how the fractions of a country’s population that become refugees and IDPs ought to be related with the intensity of the shock, country size, terrain ruggedness and the degree of geographical proximity of the country with respect to the rest of the world. The predictions of the model are then tested against real data using a panel of 161 countries covering the period 1995-2016. The empirical evidence is mostly in line with the predictions of the model.

scholarly journals THE NAMING OF LOCI AND CHARACTERS IN NARRATIVES ABOUT FORCED EVICTION FROM THE INUNDATION ZONE

Movoznavstvo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 315 (6) ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
І. М. KOVAL-FUCHYLO ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Forced Migration ◽  
Semantic Category ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Opposite Pole ◽  
Common Location ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Forced Resettlement ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Forced Relocation ◽  
Old Men

The article analyses the names of loci and characters in the memoirs about forced relocation from flood zones due to the construction of hydroelectricity. This is a continuation of the study of resettlement vocabulary, that is nominative constructions of different types (tokens, phrases, idioms, phraseologies, descriptive frames), which function in the migrants’ memories and represent the verbal image of forced resettlement. The nomination in the memoirs reveals the special vision of the experienced event by its participants, classifies their gained experience. In the studied autobiographical narratives, the most common location nominations are the names of the spatial objects in the flooded places and in the new place. In this semantic category of nomination, as well as in other analysed categories, the following regularity operates: the more nominative density of this or that territory indicates the more mastered, native locus. In the studied texts the different density of the spatial nomination of these two contextually oppositional loci is striking. Thus, a telling feature is the presence of numerous microtoponyms in stories about the lost territory and the almost complete absence of such nominations in the description of the new settlement. Descriptions of the resettlement place are concise, stingy, with a tangible contrast in favour of the lost place. In the memories of people who have personally gone through all the stages of resettlement, the arrangement of characters often occurs through the opposition ‟we — the perpetrators of resettlement” (in memories about preparation and resettlement) and through the opposition ‟we — neighbours” (in memories about adaptation to a new place). A typical place of memories is the presentation of the resettled village community as friendly and cohesive. Autonomy of direct participants in forced evictions is most often formed from the verb creative basis переселяти (resettlement): переселенці, переселенські люди, переселені (migrants, displaced people, displaced persons). At the opposite pole of the contextual semantic opposition ῾immigrants — performers of resettlement’ are numerous characters who are direct performers. The figures of people are folklorized — most often old men and women, who had been refusing to move until the last minute. Today, these images have been symbolizing the people’s resistance to the forced migration.

scholarly journals Territorial and Digital Borders and Migrant Vulnerability Under a Pandemic Crisis

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
Petra Molnar
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Guinea Pigs ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Automated Decision Making

AbstractPeople on the move are often left out of conversations around technological development and become guinea pigs for testing new surveillance tools before bringing them to the wider population. These experiments range from big data predictions about population movements in humanitarian crises to automated decision-making in immigration and refugee applications to AI lie detectors at European airports. The Covid-19 pandemic has seen an increase of technological solutions presented as viable ways to stop its spread. Governments’ move toward biosurveillance has increased tracking, automated drones, and other technologies that purport to manage migration. However, refugees and people crossing borders are disproportionately targeted, with far-reaching impacts on various human rights. Drawing on interviews with affected communities in Belgium and Greece in 2020, this chapter explores how technological experiments on refugees are often discriminatory, breach privacy, and endanger lives. Lack of regulation of such technological experimentation and a pre-existing opaque decision-making ecosystem creates a governance gap that leaves room for far-reaching human rights impacts in this time of exception, with private sector interest setting the agenda. Blanket technological solutions do not address the root causes of displacement, forced migration, and economic inequality – all factors exacerbating the vulnerabilities communities on the move face in these pandemic times.

Forecasting Forced Migration by Coupling an Agent-based Simulation Approach with Weather Data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Suleimenova ◽  
Alireza Jahani ◽  
Hamid Arabnejad ◽  
Derek Groen
Keyword(s):  
River Discharge ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Weather Data ◽  
Movement Speed ◽  
Precipitation Data ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Modelling Approach

<p>There are nearly 80 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, of which 26 million are refugees and 45 million are internally displaced people (IDPs) (UNHCR, 2020). It is difficult to foresee and accurately forecast forced migration trends due to the severity and instability of conflicts or crises. However, it is possible to capture relevant aspects of this complex phenomenon and propose an approach forecasting future migration trends. Hence, we present an agent-based modelling approach, namely FLEE, that predicts the distribution of incoming refugees from a conflict origin to neighbouring countries (Suleimenova et al., 2017). Our aim is to assist governments, organisations and NGOs to efficiently allocate humanitarian resources, manage crises and save lives.</p><p>To construct a forced migration model, we obtain relevant data from three sources: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, https://data2.unhcr.org) providing the number of forcibly displaced people in the conflict, the camp locations in neighbouring countries and their population capacities; the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED, https://acled-data.com) for conflict locations and dates of battles; and the OpenStreetMaps platform (https://openstreetmap.org) to geospatially interconnect camp and conflict locations with other major settlements that reside en-route between these locations. Consequently, we simulate the constructed model using the FLEE code (https://github.com/djgroen/flee-release) and obtain the distribution of incoming forced displacement across destination camps. We were able to reproduce key trends in refugee counts found in the UNHCR data across Burundi, Central African Republic and Mali (Suleimenova et al., 2017), as well as investigated the impact of policy decisions, such as camp and border closures, in the South Sudan conflict (Suleimenova and Groen, 2020).</p><p>In our recent collaboration with Save the Children, we focus on an ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and forecast IDP numbers within the region and refugee arrival counts in Sudan. We found that the number of arrivals in Sudan seem to depend strongly on whether the conflict will erupt in the east or in the west of Tigray. This seems to be a larger factor than the actual intensity of the conflict.</p><p>Moreover, our modelling approach allows us to investigate possible effects of weather conditions on forcibly displaced people by coupling FLEE with precipitation data, seasonal flood and river discharge levels. The purpose of coupling with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) data is to identify the effect of weather conditions on the behaviour and movement speed of forced migrants.</p><p>The overall strategy is the static coupling of weather data where we have analysed 40 years of precipitation data for South Sudan to identify the precipitation range (minimum and maximum levels) as triggers which by the agents’ movement speed changes accordingly. Besides, we have used daily river discharge data from Global flood forecasting system (GloFAS) to explore the threshold for closing the link considering values of river discharge for return periods of 2, 5 and 20 years. Currently, we only use a simple rule with one threshold to define the river distance for a given link, which we aim to investigate further.</p><p><strong>References</strong><br>1. UNHCR (2020). Figures at a Glance, Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.<br>2. Suleimenova D., Bell D. and Groen D. (2017) “A generalized simulation development approach for predicting refugee destinations”. Scientific Reports 7:13377. (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-13828-9).<br>3. Suleimenova D. and Groen D. (2020) “How policy decisions affect refugee journeys in SouthSudan: A study using automated ensemble simulations”. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 23(1)2, pp. 1-17. (https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.4193).</p>

Introduction: Dawn Chatty and Bill Finlayson

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Chatty
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
World War ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Afghan Refugee ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Displaced People

Dispossession and displacement have always afflicted life in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa. Waves of people have been displaced from their homeland as a result of conflicts and social illnesses. At the end of the nineteenth century, Circassian Muslims and Jewish groups were dispossessed of their homes and lands in Eurasia. This was followed by the displacement of the Armenians and Christian groups in the aftermath of the First World War. They were followed by Palestinians who fled from their homes in the struggle for control over Palestine after the Second World War. In recent times, almost 4 million Iraqis have left their country or have been internally displaced. And in the summer of 2006, Lebanese, Sudanese and Somali refugees fled to neighbouring countries in the hope of finding peace, security and sustainable livelihoods. With the increasing number of refugees, this book presents a discourse on displacement and dispossession. It examines the extent to which forced migration has come to define the feature of life in the Middle East and North Africa. It presents researches on the refugees, particularly on the internally displaced people of Iran and Afghanistan. The eleven chapters in this book deal with the themes of displacement, repatriation, identity in exile and refugee policy. They cover themes such as the future of the Turkish settlers in northern Cyprus; the Hazara migratory networks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Western countries; the internal displacement among Kurds in Iraq and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the Afghan refugee youth as a ‘burnt generation’ on their post-conflict return; Sahrawi identity in refugee camps; and the expression of the ‘self’ in poetry for Iran refugees and oral history for women Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

A Systematic Review of Social Service Programs Serving Refugees

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 847-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey A. Shaw ◽  
Mallory Funk
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Service Programs ◽  
General Adaptation ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Social Service Programs

Purpose: The global forced migration crisis calls for responsive, research-supported social services. This systematic review examines available research on social service programs implemented with refugees worldwide. Methods: Through accessing academic databases, reviewing article reference lists and websites, and contacting experts, we identified 1,402 sources, 68 of which met review inclusion criteria and were selected for analysis. Results: Studies were conducted primarily in high-income countries ( n = 57). Programs examined were related to general adaptation ( n = 13), relationships ( n = 20), financial and employment support ( n = 15), or a specific area such as sport or gardening ( n = 20). Few studies used pre–post ( n = 6) or experimental designs ( n = 1), and in a majority of studies, the theory underlying the intervention was not specified ( n = 41). Discussion: Additional research is needed to better understand social service programming with refugees, particularly in understudied contexts.

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