Promoting the Social and Economic Rights of Refugees

As a follow-up to the discussions with WARIPNET about practical strategies for safeguarding the social and economic rights of refugees, the Refugee Program collaborated with WARIPNET to develop a discussion paper on social and economic rights in the West African context. Entitled "From Response to Solutions: Strengthening the Protection of Refugees Through Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, A Discussion Paper on the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Refugees in West Africa", the paper was jointly presented by WARIPNET and Human Rights First at the October 2000 meeting of the Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

A short advocacy video entitled Refuge? was shown to accompany the presentation of the discussion paper. It highlighted the advocacy message of the paper by providing an insight into the experience of social and economic rights of refugees in Senegal. The video was produced by WARIPNET’s Senegalese member Rencontre Africaine Pour La Defense Des Droits De l’Homme (RADDHO) in collaboration with WITNESS and the International Refugee Program. The paper and the video were then adapted to appear as a Rights Alert, a web-based advocacy tool. The Rights Alert can be viewed at the WITNESS website.

Forced Migration and Human Rights in West Africa—Learning from the Interdisciplinary Perspective

The Refugee Program is currently participating in a research project coordinated by the Social Science Research Council focusing on forced migration and human rights in Africa. The project pairs academic researchers with NGO practitioners to explore specific issues related to the situation of Sierra Leonean refugees in West Africa.

The project seeks to examine the benefits of combining the research methodologies of social scientists with those of human rights and humanitarian practitioners. The latter tend to focus on the particular research and advocacy agenda which will inform policy decisions, while the academic approach is inclined to pursue a broader scope of inquiry. It is envisioned that the combination of the two will strengthen the respective contributions of both disciplines to the search for new solutions to complex problems of forced migration.

Human Rights First was one of four NGOs, including the International Rescue Committee (IRC), CARE, and the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, which along with the UNHCR represented the perspective of the practitioner. A representative of each of these organizations was paired with an academic social scientist. The researchers worked jointly to explore the same issue and eventually produced individual research papers. These papers were preliminarily presented at the Seventh International Conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) in Johannesburg, South Africa in January 2001. The final papers will be published by the Social Science Research Council.

Eve Lester, a consultant with the Refugee Program worked with Dr. Marc Sommers, an academic anthropologist to explore the place and experience of work in the lives of Sierra Leonean refugees in the Gambia. Their findings gave us an opportunity to further understand ways in which social and economic rights issues are experienced by refugees in West Africa.