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Forced migration has come to be the defining feature of the contemporary Middle East, a region that is both the source of and host to some of the largest forcibly displaced populations in the world. In 2015, 65 percent of the world's 19.4 million refugees—including the 5.5 million Palestinian refugees—as well as 30 percent of the world's thirty-eight million internally displaced persons were in the Middle East, while one out of every four refugees worldwide was from Syria. Seeking security and stability, millions of people from the region are on the move within and across social spaces that are at once strange and familiar, and in which they themselves are familiar and strange to others. In 2015, Turkey became host to the world's largest refugee population of over two million, while Zaʿatari camp in Jordan has grown rapidly to become one of the world's largest camps since the Syrian civil war began. With 7.6 million people—or 35 percent of the population—internally displaced, Syria now has the highest number of internally displaced persons in the world. Iraq has produced multiple overlapping displacements, resulting in one of the largest refugee resettlement programs of the past decade. Thousands of Syrians, Libyans, and Iraqis have undertaken perilous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum in Europe and elsewhere. Palestinian refugees are now in a fourth generation of exile, making their plight the longest running unresolved refugee situation in the world.

A comprehensive approach to the problem of forced displacement involves understanding and addressing human rights issues in a multiplicity of forms. This collection aims to contribute to the institutional capacities of the many different players to `operationalise' the human rights of refugees and the internally displaced, by conceptualising the emerging issues and priorities, and advancing policy thinking on human rights and forced displacement. Each of the sections of the book approaches this issue from a different perspective. The section on standards asks: What international human rights standards apply to the forcibly displaced? How do they apply? Have there been failures? Are there gaps in the international standards? Are there conflicts? The section on monitoring reporting asks: Who monitors human rights violations? Who reports the findings, and to whom? What are the respective responsibilities of the different actors? The section on solutions asks where solutions lie: Environmental planning and development? International prosecution of war criminals? Rebuilding legal infrastructures and national institutions? Enhancing the role of human rights NGOs to monitor, report, and frame forced displacement in human rights terms for increased public understanding and interest? The final section looks to the future, and considers where asylum fits into the spectrum of solving the nature of forced displacement today, the capacities and limitations of international criminal tribunals and the co-operative arrangements and practical divisions of labour that need to be fashioned between international agencies, and service relief providers

An examination of the forced displacement of Burmese people notes that international interest in the September protests led by Burmese Buddhist monks has waned. Although governments around the world condemned the violent government crackdown that ended what it called a "disruption of stability," it is pointed out that the long-time call for cultural autonomy by the ethnic minorities continues to be ignored, & almost half a million people have been internally displaced over the last decade on the eastern border alone. Millions more have crossed into neighboring countries like Thailand where an estimated two million Burmese are trying to eke out a living as illegal migrants subject to arrest & deportation. There are many more Burmese refugees in Bangladesh, India, China, & Malaysia. The current focus is on resettlement & several Western countries have agreed to accept groups of Burmese refugees. Difficult issues raised by resettlement are explored, along with the critical need for other durable regional solutions, & for the United Nations to push for dialogue between the various stakeholders in Burma. J. Lindroth

Forced displacement -- defined as the displacement of refugees and internally displaced persons due to violence -- has reached an unprecedented scale and global attention during the past few years, particularly in the aftermath of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2011 and the European Union's migration crisis in 2015. As this plight gained momentum, economics found itself unprepared to answer the basic questions surrounding refugees and internally displaced persons. Few economists or institutions were working on forced displacement. Economic theory or empirics had little to offer in articles published in journals. Data were scarce, unreliable, or inaccessible. Can economics rise to the challenge? Is the economics of forced displacement different from neoclassical economics? Can off-the-shelves models be used to study forced displaced populations? What is missing to do the economics of forced displacement? What are the data constraints that limit economists in this work? This paper provides a first nontechnical introduction to these topics. The paper argues that the modeling of utility, choice, risk, and information in a short-term setting is the key to address the problem. Neoclassical economics lacks some of the theoretical ingredients that are needed, but recent developments in game theory, neuroeconomics, and behavioral economics have opened new horizons that make the task of modeling forced displacement within reach. Empirics is clearly limited by the scarcity of quality data, but an example shows how welfare economists can start working with existing data. Economists have no excuse to maintain the status quo and should get on with the work on forced displacement.