On implementing EU-Turkey agreement

Standard Operating Procedures implementing the mechanism for resettlement from Turkey to the EU as set out in the EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal: staff shortages and rights concerns pose twin threat / Fears grow over refugee safety with EU returns plan set to take effect / Greece insists refugee deportations will […]

On getting to the US

An excellent, if unsettling, snapshot of the current process of resettlement to the US: Eliza Griswold’s Why is it so difficult for Syrian refugees to get into the US? in the NYT Magazine. Relatedly, Intelligence Squared US just held a debate: “The US Should Let in 100,000 Syrian Refugees” — 22.02.2016 update: The US Promised […]

On more proposed changes to Norwegian asylum and immigration policy

[05.04.2016 update: tracing the debate of the updated proposal can be found here.] New innvandrings- og integreringsminister Sylvi Listhaug (Frp) put out a 150 page (! document available here) document outlining proposed changes to the Norwegian asylum and immigration policy today, including 40 major + minor changes to laws and regulations. Debate will is scheduled to […]

On refugees after Paris, et al.

General: The science behind why people fear refugees related: what current debates are really about, “what we’re debating right now is really more about American feelings (our sense of security versus our sense of righteousness) than it is about macro-level solutions to their crisis.” from: Europe’s refugee problems, and ours Our reaction to terrorism is […]

On countering rape

Elisabeth Jean Wood and Dara Kay Cohen published an op-ed in the NYT on how to counter rape during war, Last year, at a global conference on sexual violence during war, many speakers agreed that the best way to deter such crimes was prosecution, and they called for more of it. But prosecutions are not enough. We […]

On catching up

After two weeks in the US, there is lots to catch up on: Sam Jones in the Guardian noting Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein’s concerns over rhetoric echoing that from the 1938 Evian conference Lamis Abdelaaty and Rebecca Hamlin posting on the Monkey Cage blog that political pressure can change the meaning of “migrant” and “refugee” at […]

On the EU internal quota relocations

25.01.16: updated statistics: 257 relocated from Italy, 157 from Greece 23.01.16: Building on the Lessons Learned to Make the Relocation Schemes Work More Effectively – UNCHR 05.01.16: Member States’ Support to Emergency Relocation Mechanism [hint: things aren’t looking so good] 01.12.15: EU to relocate asylum seekers currently in Sweden 09.11.15: 5 reasons relocating refugees is a […]

On numbers

Hannah Postel, Cynthia Rathinasamy and Michael Clemens over at the Center for Global Development’s Views from the Center blog investigate the numbers being thrown casually around in the media about Europe’s refugee crisis — Journalists have warned you that there are now 60 million refugees worldwide, and that Europe faces “the worst refugee crisis since World War […]