scholarly journals Educational inequality in the Kebribeyah Somali refugee camp in Ethiopia: an autoethnography

Author(s):  
Ahmed Muhumed ◽  
Saleh Ahmed

AbstractDue to the Somali Civil War of 1991, more than 10,000 Somali refugees resettled in Kebribeyah, a town in the Somali region of Ethiopia. For nearly three decades, the local and resettled refugee communities shared the resources the region had to offer, adopted a new common cultural norm, and fostered some levels of social cohesions. It is the education sector, however, that caused social conflicts and hatred between resettled Somalis and the native Somali-Ethiopians. Currently, the education of Somali refugee children is funded by various international organizations, such as the United Nations. On the contrary, the local Somali-Ethiopian children pay their way to schools which leads to poor educational experiences. Using autoethnography as the research method, this article examines the formation of educational gaps between the local and refugee children. Findings suggest that educational inequality can exist between refugee and host communities, if not properly managed, and can ultimately impact social cohesion and stability in the refugee-hosting regions.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 50-70
Author(s):  
Haithar Somo ◽  
Dr. Alice Kurgat ◽  
Joshua Kwonyike

Across the world, refugee hosting has been associated with costs and benefits to the hosting nations. However, in Kenya, hosting Somali refugees is majorly considered costly rather than beneficial to the nation. The county’s high insecurity is one of the major effects that Somali refugees are associated with. No objective research has indicated the specific benefits of Somali refugees in Kenya. Using mixed research method, this study focused on establishing the costs and benefits of Somali refugees. The findings show that Somali refugees pose positive and negative effects on the Kenyan state. These effects are economic, social, and environmental. The study recommends policy implementation and technological adoption strategies as ways of enhancing Somali refugee contribution to Kenya’s socio-economic development.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232199756
Author(s):  
Julia Gray ◽  
Alex Baturo

When political principals send agents to international organizations, those agents are often assumed to speak in a single voice. Yet, various types of country representatives appear on the international stage, including permanent representatives as well as more overtly “political” government officials. We argue that permanent delegates at the United Nations face career incentives that align them with the bureaucracy, setting them apart from political delegates. To that end, they tend to speak more homogeneously than do other types of speakers, while also using relatively more technical, diplomatic rhetoric. In addition, career incentives will make them more reluctant to criticize the United Nations. In other words, permanent representatives speak more like bureaucratic agents than like political principals. We apply text analytics to study differences across agents’ rhetoric at the United Nations General Assembly. We demonstrate marked distinctions between the speech of different types of agents, contradictory to conventional assumptions, with implications for our understandings of the interplay between public administration and agency at international organizations. Points for practitioners Delegations to international organizations do not “speak with one voice.” This article illustrates that permanent representatives to the United Nations display more characteristics of bureaucratic culture than do other delegates from the same country. For practitioners, it is important to realize that the manner in which certain classes of international actors “conduct business” can differ markedly. These differences in tone—even among delegates from the same principal—can impact the process of negotiation and debate.


1985 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
Paul F. Diehl ◽  
Michael J. Montgomery

Simulation is an increasingly popular pedagogical device; much of the recent literature on the theory and practice of political science instruction attests to this. Probably the most popular simulation device is called model United Nations. In recent articles in Teaching Political Science and NEWS for Teachers of Political Science, William Hazelton and James Jacob have described Model United Nations in glowing terms, focusing on one particular conference and completely ignoring the rest of the 200 or more conferences held annually across the United States.Like Jacob and Hazelton, we recognize the great potential value of United Nations simulations in trying to illuminate the often confusing politics of international organizations. As former participants and directors of these programs, however, we are keenly aware of the shortcomings and difficulties associated with the existing structure of model U.N. programs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172097433
Author(s):  
Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir ◽  
Ronny Patz ◽  
Klaus H Goetz

In recent decades, many international organizations have become almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Much existing literature suggests that major donors use their funding to refocus international organizations’ attention away from their core mandate and toward serving donors’ geostrategic interests. We investigate this claim in the context of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), examining whether donor influence negatively impacts mandate delivery and leads the organization to direct expenditures more toward recipient countries that are politically, economically, or geographically salient to major donors. Analyzing a new dataset of UNHCR finances (1967–2016), we find that UNHCR served its global mandate with considerable consistency. Applying flexible measures of collective donor influence, so-called “influence-weighted interest scores,” our findings suggest that donor influence matters for the expenditure allocation of the agency, but that mandate-undermining effects of such influence are limited and most pronounced during salient refugee situations within Europe.


Author(s):  
Michal Parizek ◽  
Matthew D Stephen

Abstract Although international organizations (IOs) and their secretariats play important roles in international politics, we know surprisingly little about their staffing composition and the factors that shape it. What accounts for the national composition of the secretariats of IOs? We theorize that the national composition of international secretariats is shaped by three factors: the desire by powerful states for institutional control, a commonly shared interest in a secretariat's functional effectiveness, and, increasingly, a need for secretariats to be seen as legitimate by being representative of the global population. Building on recent constructivist literature, we argue that IOs face increasing normative pressure to be representative in their staffing patterns. Using panel regression, we assess our argument with a new dataset covering states’ representation in the secretariats of thirty-five United Nations system bodies from 1997 to 2015. The results indicate that while functional effectiveness plays a significant and stable role, international secretariats have become increasingly representative of the global population. Moreover, this has come primarily at the expense of the over-representation of powerful states. This shift from power to representation is particularly strong in large IOs with high political and societal visibility. When it comes to IO secretariats, representativeness (increasingly) matters.


Author(s):  
Alice C. Shaffer

Central America has been one of the pioneer areas for the United Nations Children's Fund assisted pro grams. When the United Nations Children's Fund, under a broadened mandate from the United Nations, shifted the emphasis of its aid from emergency to long term and from war-torn countries to those economically less developed, Cen tral American governments immediately requested its assist ance to strengthen and extend services to children and mothers. As one of the first areas in the world to aim at the eradication of malaria and to have engaged in an inten sive campaign against malnutrition on a regional basis, the Central American experiences in these fields have become known, watched, and studied by people from many countries. Against this background, international and bilateral organi zations are working together with governments as they broaden the scope and the extent of their programs. Ten years of co-operative action have highlighted the need for train ing of personnel, both professional and auxiliary. This period has also made clear the value of more integrated programs with wider collaboration both within the ministries of government and between the international organizations.


1948 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-360 ◽  

Report to the Economic and Social Council: The International Labor Organization submitted to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations on, September 29, 1947 a report on its activities during the year 1947. This report, the first of a regular series which ILO had agreed to submit regularly (Article V paragraph 2(a) of the Agreement between the United Nations and the ILO), included background information and covered the period from the establishment of the United Nations to July 15, 1947. This report dealt with the decisions of five successive sessions of the International Labor Conference, i.e., those held in Philadelphia, May 1947, in Paris, October–November 1945, in Seattle, June 1946, in Montreal, September–October 1946, and in Geneva, June–July 1947. Future reports, it was announced, would cover only one year's work. The report was accompanied by a volume containing a series of appendices which included the text of the Constitution of ILO as amended by the 1946 Instrument of Amendment, the text of the Agreement between the United Nations and ILO, a list of the committees of ILO, a list of meetings convened by ILO as well as meetings of other international organizations at which ILO was represented during the period covered by the report, a list of and the texts of Conventions, Recommendations, and some of the Resolutions adopted by the International Labor Conference, resolutions adopted by the third Conference of American States Members of ILO, held in 1946, and the text of the agreement between ILO and FAO.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002073142199709
Author(s):  
Rae L. Jewett ◽  
Sarah M. Mah ◽  
Nicholas Howell ◽  
Mandi M. Larsen

Shock events uncover deficits in social cohesion and exacerbate existing social inequalities at the household, community, local, regional, and national levels. National and regional government recovery planning requires careful stakeholder engagement that centers on marginalized people, particularly women and marginalized community leaders. The aim of this rapid scoping review was to inform the United Nations Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery, based on Pillar 5 of the United Nations Framework for the Immediate Socioeconomic Response to COVID-19: Social Cohesion and Community Resilience. We present a summary of key concepts across the literature that helped situate this review. The results include a description of the state of the science and a review of themes identified as being crucial to sustainable and equitable recovery planning by the United Nations. The role of social cohesion during a disaster, particularly its importance for upstream planning and relationship building before a disaster occurs, is not well understood and is a promising area of future research. Understanding the applicability of social cohesion measurement methodologies and outcomes across different communities and geographies, as well as the development of new and relevant instruments and techniques, is urgently needed in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic.


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