OAMI 2130 - Managing and Solving refugee Problems: UNHCR & UNRWA

This course focuses on how critically refugee and IDPs situations are managed and solved. It draws from the course convener personal experience with UNRWA and UNHCR in different parts of the world and in various positions. It will also benefit from the contribution of guest speakers from the same organizations who will offer current and previous perspectives. The course is based mostly on case studies drawn from practices to illustrate how decisions were taken and problems solved in specific refugee and IDPs situation. The course aims at showing the insight of global international humanitarian organizations, how they related with governments, donors, NGOs, refugees etc, how they are managed and transformed with time, how they addressed ethical, moral and accountability issues that may question their fundamental principles and ultimately how refugee rights are advocated and protected in challenging political environments. The overall aim is to gain a critical sense of what is the real nature of global humanitarian organizations and how they balance in practice refugee interests with their own.

Learning Outcomes :

1) Learn how UNHCR and UNRWA work, their constraints, and the skills to analyze the work of global international humanitarian organizations dealing with displacement.

2) Understand the geopolitics that surround refugee work today and how concretely solutions can be envisaged to their plight.

3) Know how to operate in countries or in situations where refugee rights are not respected, the skills to overcome those difficulties to improve their conditions.

4) Develop techniques to publicly advocate for refugees and the skills to successfully promote respect for refugee rights.

5) Recognize the importance of communications in today refugee matters and acquire skills to communicate effectively and diplomatically when required.

6) Study situations where values, accountability and ethics are under scrutiny and learn the ethical standards required to become a United Nations official.

7) Understand how assistance to refugees is given by the international community and acquire skills to implement successfully programs for refugees.

Professional Skills :

1> Ethical behaviors required to become an international civil servant

2> Communication and advocacy skills

3> Responses in emergency situations or under precarious security conditions

4> Finding creative solutions to protect refugee rights when there are not many available

5> Negotiating with the “enemy”

6> Compassion, respect for the most destitute populations

Salvatore LOMBARDO

Séminaire

English

- In Class Presence: 2 hours a week / 24 hours a semester
- Research and Preparation for Group Work
- Research and Writing for Individual Assessments

Spring 2022-2023

- - Participation – 15%

- - Oral Team Presentation – 35%

- - Oral presentations should not be longer than 30 minutes.

- - Share an Executive Summary (2-page document) including the main information (background, positions of key actors, solutions reached, constraints, etc.) - upload this summary to Google Drive.*

- * Indicate on this summary who is in charge of what in your team.

- - Please upload documents, pictures and/or PPT (if any) and your executive summary to your respective group folder on Google Drive (in the “Case Studies” main folder).

- - Final take-home exam – 50%

- - Short essay: 4 pages maximum, in Times New Roman font, size 11, standard margins including the footnotes. Add a bibliography in annex.

- - Subject and criteria will be shared on Sesssion 8.

- - Deadline to send your work: Session 11.

Important dates/deadlines:
- Composition of team groups by Session 3
- Share Executive Summary (2 page document) Team group exercise by Session 4
- Presentation by Groups Session 11 and 12
- Presentation Subjects and Criteria final take-home exam by Session 4
- Deadline to send final take home exam end Session 11

Students will be regularly stimulated during the lessons. They will be asked to engage in teamwork, to prepare short documents (two pages maximum) based on case studies heard during the lessons or to develop short plan or advocacy strategy also based on events described during the lessons. In all such cases students will be encouraged to make short presentations.