New and Ongoing Refugee ‘Crises’

Abstract

In June 2014, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, announced that the global total of refugees and displaced persons had exceeded 50 million for the first time since the Second World War. This number has nearly doubled since the first edition of this book was published in 2007, demonstrating that the issue of refugees and asylum seekers is not going away, but on the contrary is becoming ever more pressing and important on the global stage. This peak in numbers of persons ‘of concern’ to the UNHCR can be explained to some extent by ongoing conflicts and refugee crises in countries such as Syria, South Sudan, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) which have produced huge numbers of displaced people and forced migrants. At the same time, new types of questions are emerging in relation to refugee protection, and to migrants who are forced to flee not because of conflict but because of climate change and natural disasters. This chapter will examine some of the current issues concerning gender in asylum and refugee policies to see whether the lessons learnt from previous and ongoing refugee ‘crises’ have been applied, or whether women who are forced to migrate are still left with inadequate protection from national governments and international organisations. The chapter will first examine two of the current major ‘refugee crises’, those of Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to analyse the situations of women forced to flee, and also to examine how far the UNHCR, and other international organisations, international NGOs and national governments have taken into consideration questions of gender when organising programmes for ‘protection’ of these refugees.