Accessibility

What rights do environmental refugees have compared to refugees recognised under the UNHCR?

This is my working title. I think it is quite straight forward, although finding the answer is bound to be slightly trickier. Forced migration is not a problem that is going away, and it’s not a problem that will stay in the developing world. I don’t want to use any scare tactics or promote any campaigns. I just want to tell the stories of the people who have already been affected.

To address the issue of accessibility, multimedia allows people to dip in a and out of different videos, articles and so on. It will allow people to explore the story as much or as little as they please. These are just some of the benefits of taking a non linear approach.

Climate refugees: Part of our future

The more I research this story, the more I notice how little it is reported, and the more I realise it is going to be such an enormous problem for the international community to deal with in years to come. People associate refugees of climate change to be a sub-saharan problem, but experts say it will not always be that way.

I will put the case of climate refugees into the larger context of how the rest of the world is going to deal with the effects of forced migration. So far it appears that new international laws will have to be introduced to account for the millions of people displaced through climate change. I understand why the UNHCR would be opposed to incorporating them into the mandate, because of limited resources. But what is the alternative?

Here are a few articles to explain this further:

Climate change may force 1 billion from their homes

The Climate Refugee Challenge

The Climate Institute

What is a climate refugee?

Contacts

I am beginning to find the contacts I will need in the field to arrange interviews. In 2005 I worked on a development project with Leonard Akwany  (aka Leo). We have maintained contact since then and I am really pleased that he will be advising me on aspects of this piece.  Leo works in environmental conservation in Nyanza Province. His blog, Teach a Man to Fish is worth a read too!

I found this video made by the BBC about child refugees of the Burmese Cyclone. The mapping exercise used by the aid agency is similar to the ones we used in Kenya in 2005. However, it is really important for me to remember that I am going to Kenya as a journalist now. I am not going to “empower” or change things, but to record stories of the people I meet. I really need to stick to my project question: What rights do environmental refugees have compared to refugees recognised under the UNHCR?

My main goal for the next couple of days is to make contact with charities in Kenya who are working in refugee camps. I want to interview refugees of conflict as well as environmental refugees, in order to explore how much impact the UNHCR has. I am also contacting Save the Children and UNICEF to examine how they respond to the different groups of migrants. Within the next few days I want to be working on my production schedule, outlining where I need to go and who I am going to interview.

Hello and Welcome!

Welcome to the first post on Forced Migration.  First, I feel I should explain a little about me and how I arrived at this project on environmental refugees.

My name is Ciara Sutton and I am a multimedia broadcast journalist. I am currently studying for a Masters in International Journalism at University College Falmouth. Click here to find out more about me and to see examples of my work.

This blog is going to be the hub of  work on my MA project. However, I also hope it will prove to be a sustainable forum for people to discuss the growing issues effecting environmental refugees internationally.

My Masters project is to be a mixture of video, radio, slide shows and online writing. This will be an interactive way of exploring the subject and making it an accessible platform in today’s multimedia news arena.

Before becoming a journalist, I lived and worked in Hong Kong. I absolutely loved it there and had a real fascination with Chinese culture. When it came to deciding on a story for my Masters project, it felt natural for me to seek out a story in China. I immediately thought of the one year anniversary of the Sichuan Earthquake which killed over 69,000 people on the 12th May 2008. This idea seemed perfect – the timing was good for my schedule, I have contacts in the region, and I have ambitions to work in China in the future. The initial plan was to go out for the anniversary and film a 25 minute documentary news piece on the effects of displacement on children affected by the quake. I felt rather smug having my story all planned while colleagues of mine were still thinking of ideas.

However, as the weeks began to pass I hit problems. Targeting NGOs and local charities was virtually impossible. Understandably, people in the area are wary of journalists as they have been exposed to huge amounts of media attention over the past year. However, even after explaining that I am a student and the piece is for educational purposes, it became clear that finding contacts in the region was going to be a problem.

I kept working on the project anyway, even taking Mandarin lessons! I lined up an excellent translator in the area and plotted the places I wanted to film. I then began to worry about media freedom in China and how I could get access to film. So after seeking advice from western journalists in Beijing, I started to apply for a journalist’s visa. I thought this was a great plan! The University could commission me and the Chinese authorities would grant me access to film my story. But of course things were never going to be that simple! Every time I called the Chinese visa department, they practically hung up on me as soon as I said I’d be travelling to Sichuan.

So having tried the honest approach, I thought I’d try sneaking in on a tourist visa. I’ve travelled to mainland China from Hong Kong many times on a holiday visa and its never been a problem. So, how do I disguise my TV industry standard camera from authorities bound to be on alert for journalists on such a sensitive anniversary? I decided I would take a more discreet Sony Handycam rather than a bulky P2 camera. The quality on a Sony can be just as good and you can also film in HD.

So this is how I arrived at the idea of a multimedia project. The one year course in International Journalism has not only taught me the different techniques of broadcasting (TV, radio, online news writing and text), but has also shown me how to put them together. The future of journalism appears to be multimedia and there is a pressure to be able to keep up with the developments in interactive and online news.

So what better chance to put these new skills to the test? I could use the camera for times when I would be free to film and whip out my audio recorder and trusty notepad and pen whenever I felt it unsafe or inappropriate to film. To cut a long and quite stressful story short, I made the decision not to travel to Sichuan for my project. I didn’t feel it would be safe for me, and the financial risk of being thrown out of China with no project was just too big to take. I feel very relieved I made that decision. Here is just one example of why.

So with just a few weeks to plan a project, I set about finding a similar story. I really didn’t want to lose all my research and time invested in the Sichuan anniversary. So, the aspects of the project I decided to carry with me were: the issues of displacement (particularly the effects on children), and the use of multimedia journalism. Having worked with vulnerable young people before, I feel that a TV camera is not always appropriate or effective to use. This can apply when interviewing anyone who has experienced trauma or loss.  Having the other mediums to use gives me an advantage in telling the sensitive stories in a variety of ways.

I’ve worked with young people in Kenya before and I have always wanted to return there to work one day. My Great Uncle helped establish the East of Africa Missionary in Nairobi, and I feel a very strong connection with the country and the people I know there.

So I began researching issues of displacement in Kenya. Kenya is a refuge to thousands of people seeking safety from war torn Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia. There are enormous refugee camps dotted around the country, where aid agencies are battling to cope with food shortages, drought, malnutrition as well as health problems including Cholera and HIV/Aids.

In 2o05 I visited Kibera, Africa’s biggest slum. It is a huge mix of nationalities as well as different tribes. Many will remember the violence of last years disputed elections. Members of the Luo and Kissi tribes turned on each other after claims that President Mwai Kabiki had rigged the election and that Raila Odinga had in fact won. Now there is relative peace in the country and government coalition remains in place.

What I really want to focus on is the influx of environmental refugees into Kenya. People who flee their country of origin because of drought, flood or natural disaster are not recognised under the Geneva Convention. This means they are not entitled to the same rights as refugees fleeing conflict. I will use Kenya as a case study to highlight the international problem of environmental refugees and how this issue is set to grow rapidly in the next 10 years. Which brings me to my project… Please click here to see my proposal.