Thinking ahead: displacement, transition, solutions (Forced Migration Review 52‪)‬ Oxford University

Our belief in the need for and the efficacy of humanitarian action is partly based on its actual effectiveness over the years in addressing the needs of, among others, forced migrants. Our belief in the need for and the efficacy of humanitarian action is partly based on its actual effectiveness over the years in addressing the needs of, among others, forced migrants. But this belief is tempered by the obvious and manifold failures of such action. The existence of people in very protracted displacement, the inadequacy of the solutions proposed for them and the inevitability that many people now becoming displaced will face the same fate all point to the pressing need for improvement that cannot reasonably be achieved through humanitarian action alone. Far more could be achieved if development and peace-building actors were also involved in responses to displacement.

This is not a new idea in itself, as shown by the statement made in 1967 by Sadruddin Aga Khan, then High Commissioner for Refugees, which we publish on the back cover. This issue of FMR continues to explore the more recent ideas and practices that are being tried out in order to engage development and humanitarian work in support of ‘transitions’ for displaced people and a variety of ‘solutions’.

FMR 52 also includes a range of ‘general’ articles on other aspects of forced migration.

We would like to thank Alyoscia D’Onofrio (International Rescue Committee) and Kathrine Starup (Danish Refugee Council) for their assistance as advisors on the feature theme of this issue. We are also grateful to the Danish government which has provided financial support for this issue on behalf of the Solutions Alliance of which it is vice-chair.

The full issue and all the individual articles in this issue are online in html, pdf and audio formats at www.fmreview.org/solutions. Please help disseminate this issue by circulating it through your networks, mentioning it on Twitter and Facebook and adding it to resources lists.

This issue will be available online in English, Arabic, French and Spanish. Also available is the FMR digest – formerly called ‘Listing’, now in a new format – to help you gain easy online access to all the articles published in FMR 52. If you would like printed copies of either, please email us at fmr@qeh.ox.ac.uk.

For details of Forthcoming issues see www.fmreview.org/forthcoming.
FMR 53, Local communities: first and last providers of protection (October 2016).
FMR 54, Resettlement (February 2017). Submission deadline: 10th October 2016.

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Our thanks to the many people who responded to our Readers Survey. We are collating the results and will report back in the coming months. We also hope to be able to take up some of the suggestions you had for us as to how to improve on what FMR can offer.

Marion Couldrey and Maurice Herson
Editors, Forced Migration Review

Now is the time to consolidate the shift towards full global recognition that the challenge of forced displacement is an integral part of the development agenda.

Attempts to address the drivers of forced displacement and to provide sustainable solutions for refugees, IDPs and returnees need a more nuanced understanding of the drivers of violence and of war-to-peace transitions.

The viability of the ECOWAS integration scheme implemented as a solution for those Liberians who continued to stay in Ghana is seen to be limited.

In post-conflict Liberia and Sierra Leone, partnerships that were mutually supportive and that included the displaced themselves facilitated rapid and enduring results.

With the prospect of peace comes the need to find solutions for those displaced during 50 years of fighting.