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RSC newSletteR autumn 2009 header right FEATURE Protecting Palestinian children: The role of the international community NEws RSC library move Funding successes Deputy Director’s presentation in China on dispossession and displacement AcTiviTiEs 18 November 2009 annual Harrell-Bond lecture: Jan Egeland International conference: Protecting people in conflict and crisis PUblicatioNs Special issue of Journal of Refugee Studies: Representation and displacement Forced Migration Policy Briefing on Statelessness Studies in Forced Migration book series: looking ahead Forced Migration Review issue 33: Protracted displacement coNFERENcEs, woRkshoPs & sEmiNARs Seminar series: refugee voices RSC conferences International Summer School in Forced Migration 2010 AlUmNi Dr Peter Westoby Kamini Karlekar Anna Cervi NewS Funding successes We are delighted that the Danish Dispossession & Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently committed two million displacement of Danish Kroner to fund Summer mobile peoples School bursaries to support Rsc library participants from the global RSC Deputy Director Dr Dawn move south over the next three years Chatty was invited to give a and to co-fund our conference presentation in July to the XVI The collections of the RSC on Protection held in September. Congress of the International Library were successfully moved We are equally pleased to Union of Anthropological to the Social Science Library have received 50,000 Swiss and Ethnological Sciences in (SSL) on Manor Road in Oxford Francs from the Swiss Federal Kunming, Yunnan, China. As (OX1 3UQ) in August, and are Department of Foreign Affairs Chairman of the Commission Refugee studies centre now available to readers. to co-finance our research on on Nomadic Peoples, she oxford Department of All books have been environmental displacement. We spoke about the contemporary international Development integrated into the SSL book are currently seeking additional dispossession and displacement University of oxford collection, contributing over support for this work. of mobile peoples from their 3,700 new titles to the SSL. The In addition we are grateful traditional grazing lands in 3 mansfield Road key academic journals for forced for the individual philanthropic order to make way for the oxford oX1 3Tb, Uk migration studies are now support we receive, which over establishment of nature reserves. stored in the SSL’s periodicals the last two months includes a China is currently engaged to Tel: +44 (0)1865 281720 section. The extensive and renewed pledge from Mrs Bruna moving its Mongolian herders Fax: +44 (0)1865 281730 unique RSC ‘grey literature’ – Johnson for the Bob Johnson off their lands and into cities. Email: [email protected] unpublished material – remains Scholarship, and a generous Chinese authorities regard www.rsc.ox.ac.uk as a discrete collection and pledge from Mr and Mrs Ron these measures as part of is easily accessible. These Olson to provide $50,000 to their strategies to prevent the documents are organised as support scholarships for MSc Mongolian steppe land from Design by www.advocate.uk.com before, using a geographical students through Linacre College becoming a dust bowl. These Printed on 50% recycled paper and subject-based scheme. for five years. strategies, however, reflect a Visitors to the RSC misinterpretation of Western collection, and those enquiring For more information please experiences. The lecture from afar, still have access contact Amelia Richards, Dispossession and Displacement to our specialist staff – who Head of Development, at to Protect Nature – available remain the same. Information [email protected] at www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/PDFs/ about the RSC collections in the dispossessionanddisplacement. SSL are available on pdf – sought to provide a www.ssl.ox.ac.uk and different perspective by outlining www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/library.html. the history of protected areas, the mistakes made, and the For more information, steps currently being taken please contact Sarah Rhodes, to recognise the rights of Forced Migration, African traditional and local people to and Commonwealth Subject their common grazing lands. Consultant, +44 (0)1865 285998; [email protected] For more information, please contact Dr Dawn Chatty at [email protected] 2 rSC aUtUMN 2009 ActivitieS Tenth annual harrell-bond loeze lecture: Jan Egeland k outer te te outer w The RSC is delighted to announce that Jan Egeland will be by Photo giving the tenth Harrell-Bond lecture on 18 November. The title of the lecture will be ‘Beyond blankets: in search international conference on of political deals and durable solution for the displaced’. Mr Egeland will speak about enhanced humanitarian relief efforts ‘Protecting people in conflict for the world’s displaced people, arguing that only political and crisis’ agreement and effective security arrangements will lead to progress in resolving the refugee crisis. To mark the tenth anniversary of the ICRC’s landmark Mr Egeland was UN Under-Secretary-General for workshops on humanitarian protection, the RSC hosted a major Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from international conference on the theme of ‘Protecting people in June 2003 to December 2006. He took up his current position conflict and crisis: responding to the challenges of a changing as director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs world’ from 22–24 September. (NUPI) on 1 September 2007. Hosted in collaboration with the Overseas Development In 2008, Mr Egeland published a memoir, A Billion Lives: An Institute’s Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) and with the Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity, about his generous support of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, time at the UN. UNHCR and DfID, the conference brought together over Prior to his UN appointment, Mr Egeland acquired 25 years 180 participants – researchers, humanitarian practitioners of experience in humanitarian, human rights and peace work. and policy makers – from more than 50 countries to review He served as Secretary-General of the Norwegian Red Cross, the state of policy and practice in the field of humanitarian and from 1999 to 2002 he was the UN Secretary-General’s protection. Among the participants were representatives from Special Adviser on Colombia. the governments of Denmark, Japan, Norway, UK and the Earlier in his career, he served as State Secretary in the USA, as well as representatives from Médecins Sans Frontières, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1990–97). He has International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, Save the Children also been Head of Development Studies at the Henry Dunant UK, and various UN agencies. Institute in Geneva, Chair of Amnesty International, Norway, The conference was opened by the UN Assistant High and an international news reporter for the Norwegian Commissioner for Refugees (Protection), Ms Erika Feller, who Broadcasting Corporation. discussed the question of ‘Humanitarian and Protection Spaces’. The lecture will take place on Wednesday 18 November 2009, Six keynote papers were delivered by eminent speakers, including 5pm, at the University Museum, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 Professor David Keen of the London School of Economics, 3PW. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception. Dennis McNamara of the Humanitarian Dialogue Centre, and Zonke Majodina of the UN Human Rights Committee. For more information or to reserve a place, please contact Wouter The conference considered six thematic tracks, ranging te Kloeze at [email protected] from the conceptualisation of ‘protection’ within international policy-making processes and the politics of delivering protection programmes at the global, regional and national level, to analysing community’s perceptions of protection and revisiting more practical issues relating to the implementation of protection activities. Podcasts of the plenary sessions can be found at www.forcedmigration.org/podcasts/protecting-people and the text of the keynote speeches at www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/conf_ conferences_220909.html. For more information, please contact [email protected] rSC aUtUMN 2009 3 featUre PROTECTING PALESTINIAN CHILDREN THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY Research project of Dr Jason Hart and Claudia Lo Forte sc All images © R 4 rSC aUtUMN 2009 featUre In December–January 2009, around 350 Palestinian children to child protection may acquire a dominant status within the were killed and approximately 10,500 displaced during Israel’s efforts of large numbers of child protection actors. Aside from bombardment of Gaza.1 For children growing up in the consideration of the impact of intra-organisational hierarchies, occupied territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, questions were also raised about the 2005 Humanitarian the extreme effects of political violence such as witnessed at that Reform involving the introduction of the so-called Cluster time are a tragically familiar feature of everyday life. Indeed, Approach. The adoption of this approach in the occupied this violence has shaped the settings in which successive Palestinian territories (oPt) has led to the creation of a Child generations of children have grown up. Within this volatile Protection Working Group which seeks to ensure better setting numerous UN and international agencies have worked coordination amongst relevant agencies. Yet such a group for many years with the aim of protecting children and realising also has the potential for control through the insistence on a their basic