Forced Migration Review No 43
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Issue 43 May 2013 States of fragility FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION ONLY FMR 43 www.fmreview.org/fragilestates 3 From the editors 47 Networked governance in Ecuador’s border regions Lana Balyk and Jeff Pugh Fragile states 50 Refugees from Central American gangs 4 State fragility, refugee status and ‘survival Elizabeth G Kennedy migration’ 52 Data quality and information management in DRC Alexander Betts Janet Ousley and Lara Ho 7 How to engage constructively with fragile states 53 The curious case of North Korea Jon Bennett Courtland Robinson 10 Displaced populations and their effects on 55 Was establishing new institutions in Iraq to deal regional stability with displacement a good idea? Joe Landry Peter Van der Auweraert 12 Liberia: local politics, state building and 58 Displacement in a fragile Iraq reintegration of populations Ali A K Ali Jairo Munive 60 Psychiatric treatment with people displaced in or 14 Peace villages for repatriates to Burundi from fragile states Jean-Benoît Falisse and René Claude Niyonkuru Verity Buckley 17 Fragile states and protection under the 1969 63 State fragility, displacement and development African Refugee Convention interventions Tamara Wood Yonatan Araya 20 Fragile states, collective identities and forced migration General articles Kelly Staples 66 Crisis in Lebanon: camps for Syrian refugees? 22 Repeated displacement in eastern DRC Jeremy Loveless Fran Beytrison and Olivia Kalis 69 The arts in refugee camps: ten good reasons 24 ‘Everyone for themselves’ in DRC’s North Kivu Awet Andemicael Luisa Ryan and Dominic Keyzer 72 Trails of Tears: raising awareness of displacement 27 Can Refugee Cessation be seen as a proxy for the Ken Whalen end of state fragility? Georgia Cole 74 Harming asylum seekers’ chances through poor use of human rights treaties 29 The displaced claiming their rights in fragile states Stephen Meili Antonia Mulvey 76 Older people and displacement 32 The ‘phantom state’ of Haiti Piero Calvi-Parisetti Andreas E Feldmann 79 Poetry as women’s resistance to the 35 Post-disaster Haitian migration consequences of Bedouin displacement in Jordan Diana Thomaz Maira Seeley 37 Humanitarian responses in the protection gap 80 Emergency need for telecommunications support Aurélie Ponthieu and Katharine Derderian Marianne Donven and Mariko Hall 41 Flight, fragility and furthering stability in Yemen 81 Understanding refugees’ concepts of sexual and Erin Mooney gender-based violence 45 Surviving the odds: education, commerce and Carrie Hough development among displaced Somalis 84 The g7+ group Abdirashid Duale Cover image Fragility: the state of being easily broken, damaged or destroyed. From Latin fragilis, formed from the root of frangere (“to break”). Fractured glass image over a photo of a family of Ivorian refugees walking along a forest track towards Zwedru, a town in south-eastern Liberia, following an eruption of violence in Côte d’Ivoire in 2011. In that year Côte d’Ivoire ranked 10th in the Failed States Index that measures the fragility of states worldwide. Ivorian refugees photo: UNHCR/G Gordon States of fragility 3 May 2013 Forced Migration Review From the editors (FMR) provides a forum for the regular exchange of practical experience, ragile states are risky environments. Many states fail in their information and ideas between Fresponsibilities to their citizens but those states which are researchers, refugees and internally fragile, failed or weak are particularly liable to render their citizens displaced people, and those who vulnerable. Failures of authority or legitimacy can lead to the work with them. It is published in emergence of significant organised violence; the impact of this can English, Arabic, Spanish and French then be compounded by the failure of the state to protect its citizens, by the Refugee Studies Centre of the especially minorities. Thus conflict as a cause of displacement often Oxford Department of International correlates with state fragility, whether as a symptom or a cause of Development, University of Oxford. fragility, and the ability of fragile states and their neighbours to deal with displacement has become a key indicator of failure or progress. Staff Marion Couldrey & This issue of FMR attempts to go behind the definitions, typologies Maurice Herson (Editors) and indicators to explore some of the concepts and realities. The Kelly Pitt (Funding & articles that follow also look at a variety of cases where displacement Promotion Assistant) and state fragility go together or where countries are emerging from Sharon Ellis (Assistant) conflict-related displacement and fragility. They also discuss some of the humanitarian and development responses. Forced Migration Review Refugee Studies Centre State fragility may play a significant role in forced migration relating Oxford Department of International to natural disasters or environmental crises, as failures in governance Development, University of Oxford, affect the vulnerabilities of populations and their ability to adapt and 3 Mansfield Road, be resilient. We will be following up on some of these issues in FMR Oxford OX1 3TB, UK 45, due out in December 2013, which will have ‘Crisis migration’ as its theme. [email protected] We would like to thank Alex Betts for his assistance as special Skype: fmreview advisor on this issue. We are also very grateful to the John D and Tel: +44 (0)1865 281700 Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, the Swiss Federal Department www.fmreview.org of Foreign Affairs and the UNDP Evaluation Office for their funding support for this issue. All our current institutional donors, including Disclaimer those who generously provide unearmarked funding for FMR, are Opinions in FMR do not necessarily listed on page 83. reflect the views of the Editors, the Refugee Studies Centre or the The full issue is online at www.fmreview.org/fragilestates in html, pdf University of Oxford. and audio formats. It will be available online and in print in English, French, Spanish and Arabic. Copyright Any FMR print or online material may FMR43 Listing (expanded contents listing for this issue) is available in be freely reproduced, provided that print, and online at www.fmreview.org/fragilestates/FMR43listing.pdf acknowledgement is given to ‘Forced Migration Review www.fmreview.org’. We encourage you to post online or reproduce FMR articles but please acknowledge the source and provide the original website link. The feature themes of our forthcoming issues are listed on page 83. See www.fmreview.org/forthcoming for full details, including calls for ISSN 1460-9819 articles and submission deadlines. Designed by To keep up to date on all FMR news and announcements, please sign Art24 www.art-24.co.uk up for our email alerts at www.fmreview.org/request/alerts or join us Printed by on Facebook or Twitter. Fine Print (Services) Ltd With our best wishes www.fineprint.co.uk Marion Couldrey and Maurice Herson to carry, Editors, Forced Migration Review lighter cheaper to read on mobile to post. New styleeasier FMR – devices and 4 States of fragility FMR 43 May 2013 State fragility, refugee status and ‘survival migration’ Alexander Betts State fragility poses a challenge to the refugee regime. Rather than just placing the emphasis on the need to protect people fleeing the acts of states against their own populations, it also demands the protection of people fleeing the omissions of states, whether due to states’ unwillingness or to their inability to provide for their citizens’ fundamental rights. The designation of states as ‘fragile’ or rights deprivations resulting from the ‘failed’ is frequently criticised for lacking omissions of weak states that are unable or clarity, encompassing a disparate variety unwilling to ensure fundamental rights. of situations and being an over-used political label that measures states against Although the creators of the refugee regime a range of idealised Western standards of foresaw that the definition of a refugee governance.1 Nevertheless, we can use the would evolve over time – either through concept of state fragility to understand the jurisprudence of particular states or some important things about the changing supplementary agreements – there is still nature of displacement and the adequacy little legal precision over states’ obligations or inadequacy of existing international to people fleeing deprivations that fall protection responses when the assumed outside the conventional understanding relationship between state and citizen breaks of persecution. The 1969 OAU Refugee down and states are unable or unwilling Convention may be argued to cover aspects to provide for the rights of their citizens. of state fragility as a cause of cross-border displacement (under the heading of ‘events The international society of states drew seriously disturbing public order’2); its up the Refugee Convention in 1951 in the patchy use and weak jurisprudence, however, aftermath of the Second World War to address continue to make its application to fragile the reality that some states fail to provide states unreliable. Furthermore, although for the fundamental human rights of their complementary protection standards have citizens. Yet, since the creation of the refugee been developed through the application of regime in the 1950s, the circumstances that international human rights law to extend shape flight have changed. Although many international protection, jurisprudence is of the current academic and policy debates developing slowly and in a geographically focus on ‘new drivers of displacement’ (such uneven way. The result is that the protection as generalised violence, environmental of people fleeing deprivations that fall change and food insecurity), what ultimately outside the conventional understanding determines whether international protection of persecution is inconsistent and is needed is the quality of governance in conditioned by politics rather than law. the country of origin. In states with weak governance, the only available means to The consequence is that, today, many people acquire protection may be to leave the country. who are forced or who feel forced to cross international borders do not fit the categories From persecution to deprivation laid out in 1951.