Voices from the OxHRF - Beyond Resilience

[EL Laskar, Coordinator of the OxHRF] At the launch of the Oxford Human Rights Festival in March, Dr Sana Murrani, Associate Professor (Spatial Practice) and Founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network at Plymouth University invited us to join a discourse around the limitations of resilience frameworks and assessments within the humanitarian sector.  As we recognise and celebrate resilient systems are we failing to see their limitations? Dr Murrani writes ‘celebrating the positivity of the resilient isn’t by itself a powerful enough lens to delineate the transformations that people can achieve individually and collectively after the trauma of displacement.’ 

Carey Marks, Creative Associate 2019, Mapping Creative Recovery

Moving from resilience into thriving by Dr Sana Murrani

Rhetoric around climate disasters, wars and conflict, and economic deprivation has moved on from describing the vulnerable to celebrating the positivity of the resilient. The UN definition of resilience relates the concept to the particular capabilities of cities and communities to tackle chronic stresses (such as high unemployment, crime and violence rates etc) and acute shocks (whether natural or man-made) and that one size resilience doesn’t fit all. 

Introducing Voices from the OxHRF Committee - Inspiring initiatives to strengthen the resilience of refugees

Our last blog introduced the 18th Oxford Human Rights Festival (OxHRF) highlighting the common narrative that threads our exhibition and events together - ‘resilience’. At our opening, one of our speakers, Dr. Sana Murrani, Associate Professor (Spatial Practice) at the University of Plymouth and Founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network, asked us to consider moving our vision beyond resilience to thriving. This concept is a narrative that is woven through Geena Whiteman’s contribution below.  

Geena was on our planning committee this year and is a research assistant here at Oxford Brookes University in the Centre for Business, Society and Global Challenges. Below, Geena inspires us with her reflections on how we as individuals, communities and businesses can strengthen the resilience of refugees through some innovative initiatives and perhaps offering them a space to thrive.

Exploring resilience through the 18th Oxford Human Rights Festival

El Laskar writes:

This year the 18th Oxford Human Rights Festival shared the voices and stories of resilient individuals from around the world who have been through, and are still going through, tremendous challenges on a daily basis.  

We explored cultures, encouraged debates and discussions and invited individuals to explore their own stories of resilience through music, film, art, spoken word and movement. The Lord Mayor of Oxford, Councillor Craig Simmons opened the festival on 13 March.

COVID-19: What are the implications for humanitarian shelter?

Sue Webb and Emma Weinstein-Sheffield write:

Key messages: 

1. The current COVID-19 pandemic amplifies existing humanitarian and development challenges, including those relating to housing.
2. Shelter practitioners need to be aware of the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19, including the economic impact on renters and marginalised groups and should address these risks as best they can during the peak of the crisis.
3. Immediate risk mitigation should include addressing overcrowding, poor ventilation and access to sanitation and hygiene facilities and will require close coordination with the WASH and health sectors.
4. The pandemic highlights how poor-quality housing and settlement planning increase the risk of communicable diseases and exacerbate some non-communicable diseases. There is a need for further research on the potential beneficial health impacts of humanitarian shelter responses. 

Adapting humanitarian and development operations for COVID-19 response

Note: This is an abbreviated version of a note released on 1 April 2020 on Urbanismo.ph. Positions are informed by context conditions in the Philippines and similar lessons from Myanmar. All opinions are the authors’ own and do not represent the institutions they may work with.

Ivan Ledesma (DEP 2015-16), Ica Fernandez, Nastassja Quijano, Miguel Dorotan, and Abbey Pangilinan write:

As of present writing there are now 3,746 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Philippines, including 177 fatalities, of which 21 are physicians. Eighty-four have recovered.

The country’s public health institutions are now overwhelmed. At a time when humanitarian and development institutions should be more actively working in the frontlines, it seems that smaller-scale, local and private-sector actors are more prominent in these early stages of response. While some agencies are more geared than others towards so-called ‘adaptive programming’ and ‘thinking and working politically’ and have already deployed on the ground, the nature of this global emergency has left the humanitarian and development sectors, even in disaster-scarred and battle-tested Philippines, to respond in a manner that many would describe as slow.

Human rights in the age of pandemic

The blog has been on a hiatus at a time when we were planning to offer extensive coverage of the Oxford Human Rights Festival, sadly cancelled. We are looking at ways of bringing at least some of the festival’s content online. Meanwhile, Richard Carver reflects on the continuing importance of human rights in a time of pandemic.

There is, you may have forgotten, another pandemic in the world today: the human immune-deficiency virus or HIV. If you have indeed forgotten, this is probably because of the success in managing the consequences of the virus, while still not having the medical means to prevent it. Back in the 1980s, things were much worse and HIV was widely regarded as a death sentence. Its effects were worst in the poorest region of the world, sub-Saharan Africa. One of the most seriously affected countries, Malawi, had a physician as head of state, Dr H. Kamuzu Banda. Yet all public discussion of the virus was prohibited, along with any research into HIV. At the same time, Banda insisted that all 2,000 employees at his Sanjika Palace had to be tested annually, while the national blood donor programme closed down because of a shortage of test kits.*