Shatila camp.
(c) Dr. Sari Hanafi, 2007.
About
Background
In March 2008, The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and
International Affairs (IFI) and the
Center for Behavioral
Research (CBR) at the American University of Beirut launched
a multi-year research, analysis, and policy-recommendations
program to explore the public policy and governance
challenges of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan,
Syria, the West Bank and Gaza.
For the past six decades, camps have spawn serious public policy challenges, in the areas of
security, control, governance, health, and others. Camps
across the region exist in varied conditions and present
different dimensions of policy challenges, but they also
offer many experiences and lessons that can be shared.
The program on Policy and Governance in Palestinian Refugee
Camps is the first integrated and coordinated mechanism to
share the vast amount of individual and collective research
that exists, while driving cross-sectoral analyses and using
the conclusions to enrich policy-making by the various
authorities and parties concerned.
Aims
1.
Identify research gaps and launch research projects to fill
those most urgently needed.
2. Through conferences, lectures and workshops, bring
together researchers from various academic backgrounds and
stakeholders from multiple sectors to share their results
and draw key policy-relevant conclusions.
3. Provide an ongoing mechanism for scholars, NGOs, host
governments, Palestinian groups, camp communities, UNRWA,
local authorities, and international donors to meet and
exchange ideas on the pressing challenges and the most
relevant policy solutions.
5. Compile and maintain a database of research projects and
researchers related to the camps.
6. Compile and maintain a database of Non-Governmental
Organization (NGO) and other active groups.
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Research
IFI -
AUB
Modes of
Governance in the Palestinian Refugee Camps of Lebanon,
Syria
and the Palestinian Territory.
Dr. Sari Hanafi, Program Research Director at IFI and
Associate Professor of Sociology at AUB, launched a research
project in the spring of 2008 to tackle the question of
governance within Palestinian camps.
The research project aims to unfold the relationship between
power, sovereignty and space through examining the modes of
governance within the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria and
the Palestinian Territory.
The research is timely as the refugee camps have become
critical places, raising problems of security and poverty,
especially after the armed conflict between the Lebanese
army and Fatah al-Islam militants
in Nahr el-Bared, May 2007.
There are many actors that contribute to the different modes
of governance, conflict resolution and politics of space.
These include the host authorities, the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO)
and its factions, popular committees and the United Nations
Refugee and Works Agency (UNRWA) in addition to Islamist
groups and different local and political commissars.
For 60 years, the space of the refugee camps in the
Palestinian Territory and Lebanon has been treated as a
space of exception and an experimental laboratory for
control and surveillance. Exception is
significantly related to the modes of governance in the
camps as well as the relationship between the camp and the
urban fabric.
Fellows and
Affiliates
Taming the Insurgent
City: Rethinking the place of Palestinian refugee camps in
Lebanon
Monika Halkort, PhD
candidate at Queen's University in Dublin and research
affiliate at IFI, is tracing the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared's
impact on the social, political and economic dynamics of
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
Sabra and Shatila: An
examination of self-help and governance structures
Rayyar Farhat, PhD
candidate at the Australian National University and research
affiliate at IFI, is examining the degree to which self-help
and governance initiatives within Sabra and Shatila and the
surrounding slum are impacted by the changing structure of
the society and the extending Sabra settlement.
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