The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees: Continuing Challenges after a Half Century

The world’s refugee phenomenon attracted oscillating levels of interest from governments as early as the inter-war era. Only with the establishment of UNHCR a half-century ago, however, did governments reluctantly acknowledge that managing the refugee phenomenon required an institutional structure and a genuine, continuous, multilateral effort by the international community. Since the founding of UNHCR, its role, operational approach, and, according to some observers, even its mandate have changed remarkably. Governments, frequently wavering in their support for these modifications, have at least begrudgingly endorsed UNHCR’s efforts in order to limit the spread of political instability, which too often resulted in regional economic turmoil and widespread despair. This paper analyzes how effectively and at what political and fiscal cost UNHCR has dealt with intensifying refugee flows in light of shifting priorities of governments, themselves the policy and budgetary masters of this UN body. To achieve this, the reasons behind UNHCR’s expanded responsibilities are identified, the agency’s important advocacy work is analyzed, and its expanded role and constantly altering operational approach are examined. Despite the innumerable obstacles that have confronted the agency over the past half century, the conclusions suggest that at least partial success has been achieved.Dès les années d’inter guerres, le phénomène des réfugiés dans le monde a commencé à susciter l’intérêt oscillant des gouvernements nationaux. Cependant, ce n’est qu’avec la mise sur pied du HCR – il y a de cela un demi-siècle – que les gouvernements ont été amenés à reconnaître, un peu malgré eux, que la tâche de s’occuper du phénomène des réfugiés nécessitait une structure institutionnelle ainsi qu’un effort multilatéral, continue et sérieux, de la part de la communauté internationale. Depuis sa fondation, le rôle du HCR, son approche opérationnelle et, selon certains observateurs, son mandat même, ont changé de manière très nette. Les gouvernements qui sont souvent hésitants dans leur soutien à de telles modifications, ont tout de même fini par soutenir les efforts du HCR afin d’éviter que ne se répande l’instabilité politique et que ne se produisent les bouleversements économiques de régions tout entières et le désespoir humain à grande échelle qui en sont trop souvent le résultat. Cet article examine le degré de succès qu’à eu le HCR à s’occuper des flots grandissants de réfugiés et le prix politique et fiscal qu’il a fallu payer pour y arriver, spécialement à la lumière des priorités changeantes des gouvernements qui, précisément, sont les maîtres contrôlant les affaires budgétaires et les politiques de cet organisme des Nations Unies. Pour atteindre ses objectifs, l’article identifie les raisons expliquant les responsabilités accrues du HCR, analyse son travail important d’intervention et examine son approche opérationnelle qui change constamment. Malgré les innombrables obstacles qui ont confronté l’agence au cours des cinquante dernières années, les conclusions suggèrent qu’un succès partiel a tout de même était atteint

The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985

Throughout history, mankind has migrated, whether from valley to valley or to a distant continent. At times, these population shifts may have affected only a relatively small portion of human society while on other occasions, particularly during the past century, migration has had an impact upon literally millions of people worldwide

SNL evaluation of Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON).

Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) is a networking technology which offers the potential to provide significant cost savings to Sandia National Laboratories in the area of network operations. However, a large scale GPON deployment requires a significant investment in equipment and infrastructure. Before a large scale GPON system was acquired and built, a small GPON system manufactured by Motorola was acquired and tested. The testing performed was to determine the suitability of GPON for use at SNL. This report documents that testing. This report presents test results of GPON system consisting of Motorola and Juniper equipment. The GPON system was tested in areas of data throughput, video conferencing, VOIP, security, and operations and management. The GPON system performed well in almost all areas. GPON will not meet the needs of the low percentage of users requiring a true 1-10 Gbps network connection. GPON will also most likely not meet the need of some servers requiring dedicated throughput of 1-10 Gbps. Because of that, there will be some legacy network connections that must remain. If these legacy network connections can not be reduced to a bare minimum and possibly consolidated to a few locations, any cost savings gained by switching to GPON will be negated by maintaining two networks. A contract has been recently awarded for new GPON equipment with larger buffers. This equipment should improve performance and further reduce the need for legacy network connections. Because GPON has fewer components than a typical hierarchical network, it should be easier to manage. For the system tested, the management was performed by using the AXSVison client. Access to the client must be tightly controlled, because if client/server communications are compromised, security will be an issue. As with any network, the reliability of individual components will determine overall system reliability. There were no failures with the routers, OLT, or Sun Workstation Management platform. There were however four ONTs that failed. Because of the small sample size of 64, and the fact that some of the ONTs were used units, no conclusions can be made. However, ONT reliability is an area of concern. Access to the fiber plant that GPON requires must be tightly controlled and all changes documented. The undocumented changes that were performed in the GPON test lab demonstrated the need for tight control and documentation. In summary, GPON should be able to meet the needs of most network users at Sandia National Laboratories. Because it supports voice, video, and data, it positions Sandia National Laboratories to deploy these services to the desktop. For the majority of corporate network users at Sandia National Laboratories GPON should be a suitable replacement for the legacy network

Fostering Creative Design Dialogue: A Research Based Online Catalogue of Video Clips

Design dialogue with clients, including potential users of the design, is a crucial element of designing, and a worthwhile skill to teach in design education. Moreover, in educational settings, client contact can help to make design activities more relevant and authentic. But how can the genre of design dialogue be taught? In this explorative study, we collected and analyzed examples of design dialogue in an online video catalogue, to be used in design education. A literature study about creative design dialogue formed the foundation for the video catalogue. This informed the research team about important qualities in design dialogues. Subsequently, video recordings were made of design dialogues in educational settings. The recordings were made at two levels of education (post-secondary vocational training and university level) across a variety of design domains: building engineering, industrial design and multimedia design. Analysis of the videos was based on the literature study and on interviews with design teachers. Thirty-six short fragments across varying educational settings were selected as being most relevant for design teachers and students. Each of these shows one quality of design dialogue that is also described below the video. A quality is, for instance, that it combines stages of persuasive presentation about a prototype (or other model) with stages of open discussion. In a follow-up empirical study, the research team aims to describe how design teachers can use the online video catalogue as a tool for learning