Refugees International President Ken Bacon passed away yesterday from an aggressive form of melanoma.  He was 64 years old.   

Ken was part of the extended UN Dispatch family.  He cut an On Day One video for us last year.  And in May, Ken contributed a guest post to UN Dispatch on the little known and deadly nexus between malaria and refugees.

Ken was someone who dedicated his life to helping the world's most vulnerable populations.  Even in his final days, Ken remained focused on how to prevent and mitigate the pain experienced by those that will inevitably suffer from displacement caused by climate change.  Just last week, Refugees International announced plans to establish the Ken and Darcy Bacon Center for the Study of Climate Displacement

I know many UN Dispatch readers admired Ken.  I certainly did.  You can share your thoughts and memories of Ken and his work on a memorial page on Refugees International.   And if you are so moved, you can keep Ken's legacy alive by contributing to the new Ken and Darcy Bacon Center for the Study of Climate Displacement.   Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. 

The UN Refugee Agency's most active goodwill ambassador makes her third trip to Iraq.  A UN spokesperson offers some details:

UNHCR has more on her trip, which is meant to call attention to the estimated 1.6 million Iraqis that remain displaced in their own country.

It's encouraging to see that John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian coordinator, understands one of the most fundamental principles of dealing with situations of mass displacement: that returns must be voluntary. If returns are forced, it means that people don't yet feel safe returning to their homes, and the resettlement can effectively act as renewed displacement.

Discussing Pakistan's plan to begin returns for some of the more than two million displaced by last month's army offensive, Holmes was adamant:

"We have been clear to the government, and the humanitarian community has in general, that this has got to be voluntary and the government say they accept that.

"Obviously they want to encourage people to go back, but we need to be very careful that it is a proper process, that it is voluntary, that the conditions are right when they get there, the basic services as well as security," he said.

The only awkward part was his admission that he is -- understandably -- "a bit uncomfortable" with the fact that the same army that conducted the military operation will also be leading the return program.

And in case anyone thought that returning two million people to their homes was going to be easy -- it's also going to cost billions of dollars in reconstruction. In two months, donors have met less than half of the UN's rather modest appeal for $542 million.

(image from flickr user Al Jazeera English under a Creative Commons license)

This Guardian editorial makes a smart point about the war in Afghanistan "AfPak":

It is true that the Pakistanis have finally woken up to the dangers of their equivocal relationship with fundamentalist groups, and have taken serious military action against the Taliban. But they have done this in a way that has caused both civilian casualties and dislocation on a scale that may eventually rebound against them.

Great. So not only is there a gargantuan humanitarian emergency in Pakistan's Swat Valley, but the after-effects of this mass human displacement could, quite naturally, eventually blow back in the faces of both Pakistan and the United States. I'm sure most, if not all, of the displaced Pakistanis are glad to see the Taliban finally booted out, but they also can't be too happy about being forced to leave their homes because of the government's rather heavy-handed military operation. And this is something to be very careful about.

The other point of not here is that, while critics are busy chastising the Obama Administration for not showing strong enough "solidarity" with Iranian protesters, this is a case in which some choice words about protecting civilians, given to an ostensible U.S. ally, could actually make a difference. I'm not saying that a wave of Barack Obama's magic wand could ameliorate the displacement crisis caused by the Pakistani military operation (the U.S.'s own hasn't done so great in the civilian protection department next door in Afghanistan), but this is certainly an example where the U.S. has some amount of real influence on the lives of human beings, as opposed to in Iran, where political posturing is the only thing that's really at issue.