A "Safety-First" Approach to Physical Protection in Refugee Camps

Many refugee camps today are places of insecurity and outright danger, both for refugees and relief workers, and, by virtue of their destabilizing effect, for those living around the camps. Camps are an essential element of the humanitarian response to refugees, and cannot and should not be eliminated (as has been suggested elsewhere). However, they need to be rendered secure in order to ensure the safety of displaced people and others living and working in and around the camps. During the past few decades, the main focus of the international humanitarian response in asylum countries has been to emphasize assistance at the expense of protection. Particularly in the initial emergency phase, physical assistance (“biological needs”) is given priority over protection and security concerns. It is proposed in this paper that this focus be re-directed, particularly in the contingency planning and emergency phases, so as to stress security and physical protection needs before assistance: that is, adopt a ‘security-first’ approach. Such an approach would be the basis of an overall strategy to ensure security and protection in refugee hosting areas. This strategy should be ‘regionally appropriate,’ that is, designed in accordance with the needs and capacities of the various state, international and nonstate actors that participate in the specific refugee situation. An important part of the strategy, it is argued, is the presence of a security force in the camps. Camps cannot be made secure without armed backup, but it is crucial that such a force be appropriately trained and prepared for refugee situations, and carefully controlled and monitored. The specific composition and mandate of such a force would vary from one host country to another, depending on needs and capacities

Invisible in Thailand: documenting the need for protection

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has conducted asurvey to document the experiences of Burmese people livingin border areas of Thailand and assess the degree to whichthey merit international protection as refugees

Refugiados en las ciudades: experiencias de integración

En los países de primer asilo, de transición y de destino son cada vez más las ciudades y grandes capitales que absorben a refugiados. Debemos observar lo que está pasando a nivel local para que la integración urbana se vea más como un proceso compartido por los refugiados y las comunidades de acogida

Sex Differences in Medication and Primary Healthcare Use before and after Spousal Bereavement at Older Ages in Denmark: Nationwide Register Study of over 6000 Bereavements

Background. The study aimed to examine sex differences in healthcare use before and after widowhood to investigate whether reduced healthcare use among widowers compared with widows may partially explain excess mortality and more adverse health outcomes among men than women after spousal loss. Methods. All individuals alive and aged at least 60 years in 1996 and who became widowed in the period from 1996 to 2003 were selected from the 5% sample of the total Danish population and all Danish twins. The healthcare use was assessed as the average daily all-cause and major system-specific medication use and the average annual number of visits to general physicians (GPs). Results. The average daily use of all-cause and major system-specific medications, as well as the number of GP visits increased over the period from 1 year before and up to 5 years after a spouse's death, but there were no sex-specific patterns in the trajectories of medication use and number of GP visits after conjugal loss. Conclusion. We found little support for the hypothesis that reduced healthcare use contributes to the explanation of more adverse health outcomes after conjugal loss in men compared with women in Denmark

Sosiale og sosiomatematiske normer på et 9. trinn

Denne masteroppgaven er en kvalitativ kasusstudie med temaet sosiale og sosiomatematiske normer på ungdomsskolen. Sosiale normer er normer som kan eksistere i hvilket som helst vilkårlig fag på skolen, mens sosiomatematiske normer er normer som er spesifikke til matematikkfaget (Yackel & Cobb, 1996). Gjennom å være observatører som deltar i en klasse på 9. trinn har vi observert ulike normer etablert i mikrokulturen. Observasjonen ble gjennomført i et tidsintervall på 2 uker hvor vi var til stede i 8 matematikktimer totalt. Det ble benyttet feltnotater underveis i observasjonen. I tillegg har læreren samt 4 elever blitt intervjuet og det ble tatt lydopptak av både de observerte timene og intervjuene. Masteroppgaven fokuserer på hvilke konsekvenser sosiale og sosiomatematiske normer kan ha på elevers læring. Resultatene fra studien identifiserer 7 sosiale normer og 7 sosiomatematiske normer som i ulik grad påvirker elevenes læring. De fleste av de observerte normene hevder vi påvirker læringen positivt. En av normene som omhandlet bruken av digitale læringsverktøy hevder vi påvirket læringen i negativ forstand. I tillegg var det en norm som utspilte seg på den måten at den både kunne skape læringsmuligheter, men muligens også hindre det

Design af læremidler til engelskundervisningen på mellemtrinet

In this article, we will present and discuss how a reconceptualization of content and methods at Danish primary  school level  can qualify the design of teaching resources for English language teaching. The article falls into two parts. First, we present our theoretical perspective based on socio-cultural view on language learning  and systemic functional linguistics (MAK & Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) with the integration of register as an underlying system of progression in relation to students' ability to develop their academic language (Cummins, 2016) in a cognitively challenging classroom. After this, two empirical perspectives follow in the form of a critical participatory action based research project completed in 2018-2019 (Fogh Jensen 2019) as well as linguistic and sociological analyses of learner language ​​and the national written exam for lower secondary  school level in English (Jacobsen & Melgaard, 2019). In the second part, we operationalise the theoretical and empirical perspectives through a concrete design for English language teaching at primary school level.I denne artikel vil vi præsentere og diskutere hvordan en rekonceptualisering  af indhold og metoder i engelskundervisningen på mellemtrinet kan kvalificere design af læremidler til fremmedsprogsundervisningen. Artiklen falder i to dele. Først præsenteres vores vidensgrundlag, hvor vi med teoretiske perspektiver tager udgangspunkt i sprogtilegnelsesteorier funderet i et sociokulturelt læringssyn og systemisk funktionel lingvistik (M. A. K. & Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) med integrationen af register som et underliggende system for progression i relation til elevernes mulighed for at udvikle deres (fag)sprog (Cummins, 2016) i et kognitivt udfordrende klasserum. Herefter følger to empiriske perspektiver i form af et kritisk deltagerbaseret aktionsforskningsprojekt gennemført I 2018-2019 (Fogh Jensen 2019) samt lingvistiske og sociologiske analyser af elevsprog og opgaveformuleringer til folkeskolens afgangsprøve i engelsk (Jacobsen & Melgaard, 2019). I anden del operationaliserer vi de teoretiske og empiriske perspektiver igennem et konkret didaktisk design til engelskundervisningen på mellemtrinet