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Further readings
​Jeff Crisp (2022). “Protected? UNHCR’s organisational culture and its implications for refugee advocates and activists”
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The author gives an inside perspective into UNHCR’s structures and how activists and advocates can best approach the agency with their concerns. Activists and advocates, according to Crisp, have the important tasks of holding UNHCR accountable to provide proper protection for refugees and ensure that it expands its agency. He explains that refugee protests put UNHCR in a difficult situation, which is why it responds with repression.
Available at: https://carleton.ca/lerrn/2022/unhcr-organizational-culture/
Stephan Scheel and Philipp Ratfisch (2014). “Refugee Protection Meets Migration Management: UNHCR as a Global Police of Populations”
The article shows the entanglement of UNHCR’s humanitarian practices in border control measures and policies. By UNHCR making selections on behalf of states, many people who seek protection are turned away and even criminalised. When they protest, UNHCR turns away to maintain its own moral authority.
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Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2013.855074
Amera Markous (2019). “Humanitarian Action and Anti-migration Paradox: A case study of UNHCR and IOM in Libya”
Amera Markous conducted research in Libya with refugees and staff members of UNHCR and IOM. She could prove that the agencies are not only putting donors’ interests above those they are supposed to protect, but that these practices also actively harm refugees and asylum seekers. Although she acknowledges the constrained conditions under which UNHCR Libya operates, she also highlights the lack of professionality and insufficient communication on the site of the UN agency.
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Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17N2EIPlWyt-mLO6zyri74FLOuRRRy0U5/view
Barbara Harrell-Bond (2008). “Protests Against the UNHCR to Achieve Rights: Some Reflections”
Harrell-Bond, one of the most influential researchers in refugee studies, explains that there has always been protest by refugees against UNHCR. However, in the vast majority of cases, it has been silenced and invisibilized. A grave problem is that refugees who experience rights violations from UNHCR officers have no chance to take legal action against staff members. Complaining at the UNHCR headquarters may even result in threats of withdrawing their refugee status. There is also no system or mechanism in place to hold UNHCR accountable. This is why many refugees instead decide to organise and protest, which also may result in punishments by UNHCR or violence by police and military on behalf of the agency.
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Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230583009_11
Carolina Moulin and Peter Nyers (2007). “‘We Live in a Country of UNHCR’ – Refugee Protests and Global Political Society”
In their article, the authors analyse the events of the refugee protests in Cairo, Egypt in 2005 and the strategies that were used by the protesters to achieve their rights for recognition and self-determination towards UNHCR. They argue that, within a global political society which is shaped by constant ambiguities and ever-shifting power relations, there exists no space that foresees “opportunities for refugees to actively reformulate the governmentalities of care and protection”. At the same time, Moulin and Peters emphasize how the protesters in Cairo countered these developments through re-taking their political voice and defining their own norms of care, protection, and security.
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Available at: https://academic.oup.com/ips/article-abstract/1/4/356/1824253