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Angelina Jolie makes third trip to Iraq

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.

More reasons it sucks to be a refugee

Kate Cronin-Furman at Wronging Rights lists the top five (only five?) "reasons it sucks to be a refugee." The suckiest, IMHO, seems to be number four: "Your brain might swell up and kill you." Because if you're a refugee, you aren't facing enough pressure from your home country, the country where you've been displaced, and the dire conditions in which you live; no, your own brain has to come after you.

But to continue this line of morbid thinking helpful understanding of refugees' plight, I thought I'd add a few reasons that it sucks to be a refugee that we've mentioned over the past few months:

  • You lose contact with your friends and family -- and hope that someone invents a sort of "search engine" to help you out.
  • You could be rejected for asylum by the very country that started a war in your backyard to begin with. And struggle if you are lucky enough to get there.

(image from flickr user hdptcar under a Creative Commons license)

Bringing Pakistan’s displaced home — voluntarily

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)

Mogadishu “descending into chaos”

MSF just put out a warning that the majority of the populaiton of north Mogadishu has fled as fighing escalated in the Somali capital.  They have even had to close a pediatric hospital and three health clinics in the city. 

MSF just put out a warning that the majority of the populaiton of north Mogadishu has fled as fighing escalated in the Somali capital.

 Somalia has displaced people in clusters throughout the country; 1.2 million people are now displaced. Things there are so bad and dangerous that you can find people fleeing to the same places others are fleeing from, as each family tries to calculate their best odds for safety. The capital, Mogadishu, is an example; it’s got ten years of internally displaced persons (IDPs) accumulated in camps in and around the city. Right now, people from conflict-affected villages are heading for Mogadishu even as people are leaving the city in droves. 204,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu since May, one of the worst waves that has been seen. At the same time, about 30,000 have arrived to the city since February. Reliefweb has an excellent map of population movements.

 That was a really long introduction to possibly the only good news you will hear about Somalia for the next year. Women’s groups in Mogadishu are doing their best to help IDPs in the city. Asha Sha'ur, an activist, described in IRIN Africa how women’s groups can access IDP camps. “We have had problems but both sides to the conflict have been good at allowing us [women] to help the needy. When they see a bunch of women they don’t bother us…” Larger agencies are trying to tap into that ability to move freely and understand local context; the UN is looking for consultants from the Somali diaspora willing to do 3-6 month consultancies in-country.

Another reason to worry about the Swat Valley refugee crisis

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.

Pakistani offensive moves into Waziristan

The fighting between the Pakistani military and Taliban insurgents that has already displaced more than two million people has now moved into the Federally Administered Tribal Area of South Waziristan (just south of the already affected province of Lower Dir). 40,000 people have already started moving out of the area.

South Waziristan is not a hugely populous area, and the latest wrinkle to Pakistan's unprecedented displacement crisis is that many in South Waziristan evidently -- this was a surprise to me -- have "second homes" to avoid the typically harsh winters. Add that to the dynamic whereby 80%-plus of displaced Pakistanis are being taken in by other Pakistani families, rather than taking shelter in camps, and you have a situation that is just sustainable enough to be direly unsustainable.

This whole situation also really puts in perspective the rhetoric that used to be tossed around about "fighting terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here."  For millions of Pakistanis, "over there" is right here.