4th Annual Conference 2016

ABSTRACT

The peaceful protests in Syria early in this decade turned ugly in March of 2011. The speed with which Syria disintegrated into extreme violence and armed conflict between state security agencies, local peaceful demonstrators and non-state actors shocked the world; it also left the humanitarian aid regime in turmoil as agencies struggled to respond to the growing displacement crisis on Syria’s borders. This presentation   sets out to understand the perceptions of both Syria’s refugees as well as policy makers and practitioners, and the host community.  It seeks to understand the discrepancies between the perceptions and aspirations of each group in adequately addressing the protection needs of Syria’ s refugees in the context of a de facto policy of refugee  regional containment as well as  the non-binding nature of the neighbouring states’  obligations  to provide refuge.  

Prof. Dr. Dawn Chatty is a social anthropologist whose ethnographic interests lie in the Middle East, particularly with nomadic pastoral tribes and refugee young people. Her research interests include a number of forced migration and development issues such as conservation-induced displacement, tribal resettlement, modern technology and social change, gender and development and the impact of prolonged conflict on refugee young people.

Prof. Chatty is both an academic anthropologist and a practitioner, having carefully developed her career in universities in the United States, Lebanon, Syria and Oman, as well as with a number of development agencies such as the UNDP, UNICEF, FAO and IFAD. After taking her undergraduate degree with honours at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), she took a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands. She returned to UCLA to take her PhD in Social Anthropology under the late Professor Hilda Kuper.