The Queens Chapter United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA Queens) hosts the panel discussion “The Refugee Crisis.” The discussants are John Solecki (Senior Policy Advisor, UNHCR), Francis Madi (Founder, Voices of Silence), Rosemarie Pace (Pax Christi Metro NY) and Megan Casey (Queens College).
The event will take place Saturday October 25, 2014 at the Atrium at the Queens Museum. Please visit the page for more information.
David FitzGerald will discuss why some people facing violence and persecution flee. Others stay. How do households in danger decide whom should go, where to relocate, and whether to keep moving? What interests and conditions in countries of origin, transit, and reception shape people’s options? The Refugee System tells how one Syrian family spread across several countries tried to survive the civil war and live in dignity.
“The Native and the Refugee” is a long-term multimedia project by Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny profiling the terrains of the Indian reservation and the Palestinian refugee camp, “spaces of exception” that have become essential in the struggle for decolonization and indigenous autonomy. While the existence of such spaces is the result of settler-colonialism (albeit at different stages) and are repositories for its ongoing violence, they also open up new possibilities for resistance and for conceptualizing existence outside the boundaries of the nation-state.
As political instability around the world displaces larger and larger numbers of people, the international community struggles to institute an adequate and equitable arrangement to meet its obligations to protect refugees; repatriation is more often than not impossible, refugees face deplorable conditions in camps as well as inadequate paths to local integration and resettlement, and burden sharing
With the Taliban take-over in Afghanistan, thousands of Afghans have sought to flee the capital. A far larger displacement crisis is likely to occur in the coming days. The U.S. response so far has been chaotic, with promises from the President to ensure that U.S. citizens find safety but no firm plans to help all
