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Off the cuff
Camps, Refugees, IDPs

What role does humanitarian action play in population displacements?

This work focuses on how humanitarian organisations operate, including their members, self-portrayals, messages, practices and cultures. Aid to refugee, displaced, deported, exiled and interned populations plays a central role in humanitarian action both now and in the past. What types of aid are provided to internees and displaced persons? What kinds of obstacles and dilemmas do these organisations face? What sorts of practical, political and ethical questions are raised by the participation of aid groups in population displacement and internment policies?

Camp de rétention de Dar El Jebel
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Libya: the forgotten ones

Michaël Neuman spent ten days in Libya with Médecins Sans Frontières teams working in detention centres for migrants. From his stay, he brings back the following impressions that illustrate the gloomy situation of the people who are held there, for months or years, and the even more difficult situation of all those subject to kidnapping and torture.

Situation of migrants around the refugee center in La Chapelle, Paris.
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Hospitality

Thanks to the migrant crisis, or the reception crisis as it would be more appropriate to call it, the issue of hospitality is back in the forefront. On 17 May, the Maison des Métallos organised a conference with two social science researchers - Michel Agier and Benjamin Boudou - and an NGO manager Cécile Poletti to discuss existing tensions between private hospitality and public hospitality

Boats transporting migrants are abandonned in Pozzallo port
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Boats

This post tells of the 'Boat for the Vietnam' episode, the MSF Search and Rescue operations to be launched in the Mediterranean and the notable absence of the Australian section of MSF from any debate on refugee policy in that country.

Food distribution in Mogadishu, Somalia
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Somalia and the International Status Quo in Refugee Management: When is the right time to say the big F word?

Humanitarian assistance has become entangled with migration and security agendas. Indeed, most humanitarian assistance in Somalia and in refugee camps is subordinated and in support of these two agendas.