Call for papers: UNCHR and the Struggle for Accountability: an examination of parallel regimes (conference panel)
Deadline: 1 September
This panel is part of the jointly-organised World Conference on Humanitarian Studies and Third Istanbul Human Security Conference, to be held 24-27 October 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey. More information about the conference can be found here: http://www.humanitarianstudiesconference.org/index.php?id=22
Abstract:
Over the last two decades, UNHCR has taken important steps towards achieving institutional accountability. Nevertheless, basic questions such as to whom the organisation owes accountability and how a better accountability performance can be achieved remain unanswered in practice. While the organisation is actively responding to the changes in the contemporary humanitarian landscape -- such as those brought forward by humanitarian reform, changing conceptions of the role of the refugee camp, and the turn to humanitarian technology -- its particular mandate ('to provide international protection to refugees' and to 'seek permanent solutions to the problem of refugees') suggests that its struggle for accountability should be read as an institutional narrative of change and resistance.
Taking this UNHCR-specific focus as a starting point, this panel will critically unpack the ways in which the organisation has relied on legal regimes [human rights] and the introduction of biometric procedures and RBM/indicators as modes of enhancing accountability. It considers broader developments in international law concerning international responsibility and analyses how these can be applied to UNHCR in order to increase its accountability for breaches of its protection mandate.
The panel considers the differences and similarities between these regimes, in particular how the relationship between humanitarian accountability to donors and accountability to the recipients of international protection and humanitarian assistance plays out in each of these different contexts.
The panel thus hopes to arrive at some broader insights about the extent to which these regimes of accountability exist in parallel or whether we are seeing a transition from a focus on legal accountability, including a human rights-based approach, towards an increasing focus on technological (RBM and biometry) accountability in the context of UNHCR refugee management and the handling of personal refugee data.
To read the abstract online, click on this link: http://www.humanitarianstudiesconference.org/index.php?id=9&tx_ptconference_pi4[showUid]=54&cHash=f3e92d9e200f39dd399567647c1e29ec
To submit papers, click on this link and follow the instructions: http://www.humanitarianstudiesconference.org/index.php?id=20. The deadline is 1 September. We welcome papers from practitioners, activists and academics. Email [log in to unmask] with any questions for the panel members.
Best,
Kristin B. Sandvik, Maja Janmyr and Katja Lindskov Jacobsen
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