Refugee Realities

In this podcast, MSc student in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies Maria Harb meets two inspirational women - Victoria Lupton and Fida Alwaer. Victoria has been living in Lebanon for the past 10 years and is the co-founder of Seenaryo, a leading specialist in theatre and play-based learning with marginalized communities in Lebanon and Jordan - in particular refugee communities. Fida was forcibly displaced from her home country Syria and arrived in Lebanon in 2012. In 2017, she began as a participant in a Seenaryo youth theater project and has since worked as a facilitator on many different Seenaryo projects after undergoing Seenaryo’s theatre leadership training. 

Victoria talks us through how Seenaryo came to be and how the organisation continues to navigate the different crises in the country. She also explores the issue of NGOs focusing solely on the refugee population and how it can risk intensifying tensions between host and refugee communities. 

Fida talks to us about how her involvement in Seenaryo’s theater projects allowed her to learn about the stories of other asylum seekers in Lebanon and to share her own story. She also tells us about how through the different theater projects, her voice was amplified, and she could openly express her experiences with different issues including single motherhood. 

Refugees and asylum seekers are all too often seen through the narrow prism of their experiences of displacement, but this is only one part of the picture. Refugee artists and their community partners challenge those limits daily through storytelling, creative space-making, and movement organising. Natasha Menon and Sarah Doyel, two International Migration and Public Policy master’s students at LSE, talk to two advocates about the role of art in refugee advocacy work. Usman Khalid and Emily Churchill-Zaraa discuss why storytelling matters, how Refugee Week is a movement rather than a moment, and the ways in which we can all act in solidarity with refugees daily. Pour yourself a cup of coffee (or tea) and join the conversation. 

Emily Churchill-Zaraa is the Coordinator of Refugee Week, an arts and cultural festival celebrating the contributions of refugees. This year the festival is being held 14 to 20 June. Refugee Week UK is a partnership project coordinated by Counterpoints Arts, which is a charity that supports and promotes the arts by and about refugees and migrants. 

Usman Khalid is the founder and director of HAVEN Coffee. Founded in February 2019, HAVEN Coffee is a social enterprise serving ethically sourced, fair-trade, organic cups of specialty coffee with a social mission of breaking the false narratives about refugees in society.  

Purchase tickets to the Laff-Uccino comedy event with HAVEN Coffee on 19 June here: https://refugeeweek.org.uk/events/laff-uccino-2/ 

Learn more about HAVEN Coffee on their website: https://www.havencoffee.co.uk/ 

Follow HAVEN Coffee on Instagram and Twitter @haven_coffee and on Facebook @havencoffeeuk. 

Find out more about Counterpoints Arts on their website: https://counterpointsarts.org.uk/ 

The UNHCR estimates that 90% of refugees are produced in countries that are the most vulnerable and the least prepared to adapt to the repercussions of climate change. In this episode, MSc student in Health and International Development Aimée Wolff interviews Andrew Harper, special Advisor on Climate Action to the UN Refugee Agency, who illuminates the increasing complexity behind the drivers of migration since the creation of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the implications of climate change on international protection. 

The nature of forced migration and the drivers of migration have changed drastically since the end of World War Two. Today, climate change is considered the ‘biggest issue on the forced displacement agenda’, yet its consequences are felt disproportionally across the world. Since 2020, fragile states have been impacted by the so-called Triple C—Climate Change, Conflict and COVID-19—whereby each acts as a threat multiplier. 

Despite more people being displaced because of disasters relative to conflict, there is no explicit mention of ‘climate refugees’ in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Andrew Harper addresses highly debated questions of whether the UNHCR’s mandate and the legal definition of who constitutes a refugee should be expanded by referring to developments in international protection. In particular, he highlights the applicability of international refugee law through the UNHCR’s legal considerations on climate- and disaster-induced cross-border displacement, and touches upon the role of regional legal instruments governing the protection of refugees, such as the Kampala Convention and the Cartagena Declaration. 

What remains clear is the international obligation to provide protection to those who had to flee their homes at no fault of their own. Doing so in the context of climate change and human mobility requires humanitarian agencies to shift their workings from a reactive to a proactive approach, bearing in mind that the most vulnerable are those who are unable to flee. 

Inspired by the decades-long struggle to collect consistent data on international migration globally, this podcast episode explores recent data innovation efforts made by the International Organization for Migration’s Global Migration Data Analysis Center (IOM’s GMDAC) in Berlin, Germany.  

In this episode, MSc student in International Migration and Public Policy Sarah Phillips spoke with two LSE alumni: Niklas Sievers, a former student in the MSc in International Migration and Public Policy program, and now a Data Innovation Analyst at GMDAC; and Marzia Rango, a former student in the MSc in Development Studies program, and now the Data Innovation and Capacity-Building Officer at GMDAC. Their work at GMDAC centers around their mission to improve the data on migration globally while emphasizing the statistics are more than just numbers: they represent real people in need of protection, rights, and help.  

In addition to discussing the role of GMDAC in the field of migration studies, this episode highlights a few of the key issues, as identified by our guests, present in the field that affect forced migrants and refugees. Other topics covered include: Trusting Big Data and Policy-making; Ethical Concerns and Responsible Use of Data; and the Impact of Big Data on Migration.