scholarly journals Decade of Despair: The Contested Rebuilding of the Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp, Lebanon, 2007–2017

Refuge ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-149
Author(s):  
Are John Knudsen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Ownership Of Land

In mid-2007 the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli was destroyed by the Lebanese Army battling an insurgent Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam. Displacing about 30,000 Palestinian refugees, it was one of the largest internal battles in post–civil war Lebanon. A decade later, the camp has yet to be fully rebuilt; indeed, reconstruction has been slow, confictual, and underfunded. Rebuilding the camp has been contested and delayed by political opposition, funding shortfalls, and complex ownership of land and property. About half of the displaced families have been able to return, the remainder are internally displaced, living temporarily in other camps or rented apartments. This article analyzes the slow-paced reconstruction of the Nahr al-Bared camp and especially what can be learnt from rehousing refugees in a militarized space of exception.

Visual Portraits of Za‘atari Syrian Refugee Camp

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-252
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Syrian Refugee ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Host Government

The Syrian Civil War, now in its sixth year, has displaced an estimated 11 million people (with numbers constantly escalating), nearly half the country's population. Of these, the United Nations estimates 4.8 million Syrians have fled their homeland. News reports have tended to focus on the struggles of those crossing the Mediterranean and seeking asylum in Europe, but most refugees have sought safety in the neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, where they have dispersed and “settled” in towns and cities. A comparative few have settled in host government and/or UNHCR sponsored camps. Jordan's Za‘atari Camp, just seven miles from the border, is the largest Syrian refugee camp. Its population peaked at more than 120,000 residents and currently has between 75,000 – 80,000 residents most of whom are from the Dara'a area. The camp is numerically equivalent to Jordan's fourth largest city.

scholarly journals Challenging Fieldwork Researching Large-Scale Massacres in Algeria

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia zina Ghanem Yazbeck
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Vicarious Traumatization ◽  
Accurate Estimate ◽  
Press Conference ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
History Of ◽  
At Home

This paper is based on my research experience in an area that was the scene of a massacre: Bentalha, a hamlet, 30 km away from the Algerian capital Algiers. This massacre took place on September 22-23, 1997 during the “black decade” (1991-2001), a period of the civil war during which 150,000 people were killed, 7,000[i] disappeared and 1 million internally displaced. After a background section on the history of this conflict, the paper describes the setting where my fieldwork took place. This article discusses my experience on the field as well as the emotions such as frustration, fear, anxiety and vicarious traumatization that I experienced in the process. It also addresses questions of self-reflexivity, positionality and the insider/outsider status. I am writing from the perspective of an Algerian sociologist trained in France, yet my experience in doing fieldwork “at home” can be useful to other scholars who do or plan to do fieldwork in dangerous places in their countries or societies.Notes[i]. It is very hard to obtain an accurate estimate of the total number of victims. However, the Algerian President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika declared during a press conference in Paris on June 2000 that the number of victims was 150,000.

Federalism and Development: The Ethiopian Dilemma

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assefa Fiseha
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
Federal System ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Instability Development ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Absolute Dominance

Key to Ethiopia’s remarkable political and economic changes is its transformation from highly homogenising and centrist rule to a federal system aiming at managing its complex diversity. The post-1991 dispensation has ended years of civil war, and served as a foundation for the impressive economic performance. Lately the country has continued to face wide-spread protests. How does one explain the paradox between an impressive economic performance versus growing political instability? Development is centrally designed and managed along with the identification of poverty as an existential threat against which all resources must be mobilised. This means that development takes overriding priority and a central role, compromising the constitutional autonomy of the states. The outcome as witnessed in the protests is new mobilisation and conflict unleashed by growing ethno-nationalism. The absolute dominance of a single vanguard party that monopolised power has also overshadowed institutions and sidelined political opposition while emboldening hardliners.

The Legacy of Displacement during La Violencia and the Origins of the Contemporary War in Colombia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbey Steele
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Internally Displaced

Chapter two presents a historical overview of the Colombian civil war. The current civil war’s roots extend back to La Violencia, the previous civil conflict in the mid-20th century, in which millions of Colombians were internally displaced. The chapter traces the legacy of civilian displacement for both the development of political loyalties, and the emergence of the contemporary insurgencies. The political loyalties formed during this period in some communities have effects on the trajectory of the civil war violence decades later.

Palestinian Refugees in International Law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albanese Francesca P ◽  
Takkenberg Lex
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Durable Solutions ◽  
Second World

The Palestinian refugee question, resulting from the events surrounding the creation of the state of Israel seventy years ago, remains one of the largest and most protracted refugee crises of the post-Second World War era. Numbering over six million in the Middle East alone, Palestinian refugees’ status and treatment varies considerably according to the state or territory ‘hosting’ them, the UN agency assisting them, and political circumstances surrounding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict these refugees are naturally associated with. Despite being foundational to both the experience of the Palestinian refugees and the resolution of their plight, international law has not been a decisive factor in discussions concerning their fate. This compelling new edition offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of various areas of international law (including refugee law, human rights law, humanitarian law, the law relating to stateless persons, principles related to internally displaced persons, as well as notions of international criminal law), and probes the relevance of their interplay to the provision of international protection for Palestinian refugees and their quest for durable solutions.

Lakwena, Alice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Behrend
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Northern Kenya ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Government

Alice Lakwena’s transformation from a healer into a Christian prophetess occurred during a period of civil war and unrest in Uganda. In 1986, she founded the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF) in northern Uganda and waged war against the government of Yoweri Museveni. Above all, her power was based on the practice of possession by gendered spirits, a ritual that fostered a unique form of holy war. Though her forces were defeated, and she later died in a refugee camp in northern Kenya, her fame continued to grow after her death.

scholarly journals Forced Displacement and Refugees

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-440
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Displaced Populations ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
The World

Forced migration has come to be the defining feature of the contemporary Middle East, a region that is both the source of and host to some of the largest forcibly displaced populations in the world. In 2015, 65 percent of the world's 19.4 million refugees—including the 5.5 million Palestinian refugees—as well as 30 percent of the world's thirty-eight million internally displaced persons were in the Middle East, while one out of every four refugees worldwide was from Syria. Seeking security and stability, millions of people from the region are on the move within and across social spaces that are at once strange and familiar, and in which they themselves are familiar and strange to others. In 2015, Turkey became host to the world's largest refugee population of over two million, while Zaʿatari camp in Jordan has grown rapidly to become one of the world's largest camps since the Syrian civil war began. With 7.6 million people—or 35 percent of the population—internally displaced, Syria now has the highest number of internally displaced persons in the world. Iraq has produced multiple overlapping displacements, resulting in one of the largest refugee resettlement programs of the past decade. Thousands of Syrians, Libyans, and Iraqis have undertaken perilous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum in Europe and elsewhere. Palestinian refugees are now in a fourth generation of exile, making their plight the longest running unresolved refugee situation in the world.

Democracy and Displacement in Colombia's Civil War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbey Steele
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Combining Evidence ◽  
The World ◽  
Displaced People

Civilian displacement is a regular, massive feature of civil war violence. This book provides a new way to think about displacement, by connecting it to how armed groups target violence against civilians, and how civilians respond. Individuals escape selective violence, civilians relocate together to avoid indiscriminate violence, and groups experience political cleansing following collective violence. Political cleansing is the expulsion of civilians from their communities based on a shared identity or trait. While it is difficult to detect civilians’ loyalties, the book shows that elections can both facilitate and incentivize displacement by revealing civilians’ political preferences; and giving elites a stake in the electoral composition of a community, motivating them to ally with armed groups. The book traces how democratic reforms triggered both processes in Colombia, leading to a major intensification of the war and to one of the highest populations of internally displaced people in the world. Combining evidence collected from remote archives, interviews with ex-combatants and displaced people, and quantitative data from the government’s displacement registry during nearly two years of fieldwork, the book connects Colombia’s political development and the course of its civil war to displacement.

scholarly journals Palestinian Refugee Identity: Marginalization And Resistance In Refugee Camps In Lebanon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Sabarini
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
A Site

Through a review of theoretical literature on the topics of space, power, and identity as well as literature on the Palestinian refugee situation in Lebanon, this research paper uses a critical approach to space in order to examine how Palestinian identity is formed within the specific context of refugee camps in Lebanon. The refugee camp has been used by the Lebanese state as a disciplinary tool to contain identities, but it has also served as a site for the displaced Palestinians to construct meaningful lives and create new places and identities. This paper will specifically examine the way in which a marginalized collective identity as well as an identity of resistance has been formed and renegotiated using culture, memory, and militancy by displaced Palestinian refugees living within the boundaries of camps in Lebanon.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document