Forced Migrants, Human Rights and Lasting Peace

This three-year institute programme (IP) studies how human rights protection for forced migrants (refugees and internally displaced persons, IDPs) can help secure a lasting peace. To explore this research issue, this programme targets three types of forced migration, defined, in part, by the anatomy of the conflict that produced them and the context of their refugee/IDP existence: protracted (“warehoused”), in transit and in emergency. In the three country cases studied here (Lebanon, Cyprus, Pakistan/Afghanistan), the refugees/IDPs rights are a key element in any lasting settlement to the conflict:

• In Lebanon, about half of the country’s 250,000 Palestinian refugees live miserably in 12 refugee camps, lacking civil rights.
• In Cyprus communal conflict between the island’s Greek majority and Turkish minority led to the 1974 war and subsequent partition of the island. This led to internal displacement of 162 000 Greek Cypriots and 43 000 Turkish Cypriots leaving behind their homes and properties.
• Afghanistan has witnessed war since 1978, with over five million of the population seeking refuge in Pakistan and Iran during the 1980s.

 The research programme is tied to institutional collaboration in host country institutes and benefits from institutional linkages and ongoing projects in the three countries funded by other sources.