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| Africa! |
In the past month or so I have felled the
equivalent of a small rain forest in forms and other documents in
preparation for the ‘big trip’ – that is, for my return to Africa in the second
half of this year. University travel
approval forms, risk management assessments, applications for funding and ethics approval to conduct ‘human
related research’ (interviews)… the paperwork has started to feel like an
end in itself, rather than a step towards the main goal. The main goal is to spend roughly four months
in Africa – South Africa as well as other countries – conducting research for
my PhD. And as it happens, the second half of the
year is no longer very far away. July
23 is my departure date, just under two months from now, when I will board
the plane back to Johannesburg. Oh
international terminal, how I love you…
Like all great adventures, the plan for
mine remains loose at best. So far I
have to decided to spend my first month in Johannesburg. But that’s about as far as I
have got - other than to decided that that first month will be spent planning the rest of my trip! For my PhD I intend to conduct at least two
‘case studies’ – I will choose two African countries in which to
conduct a more detailed study of refugee protection. My main interest is in domestic
implementation of the ‘expanded African refugee definition’ – that is, to what
extent are African countries actually providing the expansive protection to refugees envisaged by the African Refugee Convention’s expanded definition of a ‘refugee’? (See Who is a refugee in Africa? A discussion over coffee here for more general
information about my PhD research). While I
would love to visit all 58 African countries (and I may yet!), for the purposes
of my PhD, and to ensure that I have something more than cursory to say, I will
stick to a few case studies.
One of my case studies will be South
Africa. Not only is it a relatively easy
country to conduct research in – it actually documents some of its refugee
protection laws, policies and practices – but as the single largest recipient
of asylum claims in the world last year, its treatment of refugees is fairly
representative of a large proportion of refugees in Africa. My second case study is yet to be confirmed. It was going to be Kenya, it being another of the main refugee-receiving countries in Africa. Kenya is a country with a vastly different
refugee protection regime than South Africa’s – for a start, it is run by the
UNHCR, rather than the government, and it conducts refugee status determination
largely on a group, or prima facie,
basis rather than individually (this makes sense when you consider that late last year some 1500 Somalis per day were crossing the border into Kenya). One of the reasons for choosing Kenya as a case
study was its policy of ‘encampment’ – meaning that refugees in the country are
by and large confined to refugee camps, the largest being Dadaab and
Kakuma. However, as it turns out, both
Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps are located either within or near areas for
which the current Australian travel advice is ‘do not travel’, owing to their
proximity to Somalia and South Sudan respectively. This, unsurprisingly, has both me and my
university a bit spooked (and has complicated my risk management forms no
end…)
Alternative case study countries include
Tanzania (which from a personal point of view would be fabulous! Think Mount Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar, the
Serengeti….) and Zambia (which the Lonely Planet describes as the ‘real’
Africa, a ‘challenge’ and the ‘diamond in the rough’). In all likelihood a final decision won’t be
made until I am back in Johannesburg and can chat to people there about the
research potential and travel practicalities of my various case study
candidates. So stay tuned!
In addition to research in my case study
countries, during my big trip to Africa I also intend to visit the
headquarters of the African Union (formerly the Organisation of African Unity,
the organisation that drafted the African Refugee Convention) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the hope of
finding some of the materials prepared during the Convention’s drafting. In this I am less than hopeful – other researchers
I have spoken to who have attempted something similar have been variously told
that the African Union’s archives do not exist, were destroyed in a flood, or
would be open ‘soon’. But to date noone has quite proved that the archives do not exist, so I figure it’s
worth a shot.
I plan to stay in Africa until around the
end of November, when I will travel to the UK for a refugee law postgraduate workshop
at the University of London’s Refugee Law Initiative, a conference at Oxford
University’s Refugee Studies Centre and, funds permitting, a short trip to
Geneva! (to conduct research at the
archives of UNHCR, which I at least know exist…)
It is exciting times indeed. I frequently have to pinch myself, as a
reminder that a dream that began seven years ago in 2005, watching The Constant
Gardener at a suburban cinema in Melbourne, is about to come true!
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| Kakuma Refugee Camp - north-east Kenya, near the border with South Sudan |
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| Inside the African Union - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia |
