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Despite global efforts for environmental protection, there is a gap in the literature about the contributions of a sustainable humanitarian supply chain (SHSC) to the promotion of human rights in refugee settlements. In this context, this study investigates how the generation of sustainability in the humanitarian supply chain (HSC) acts as an instrument for guaranteeing the human rights for refugees.

A literature review was conducted to identify the state of the art and research challenges as well as an analysis of international law documents related to refugees, international human rights law and environmental protection, and a critical study of sustainable initiatives already taken by international organizations and humanitarian agencies in refugee camps.

As a result, ensuring human rights in refugee camps is directly related to the development of a SHSC that contributes without deviation to the enjoyment and exercise of human rights by preserving the local environment.

This study offers a literature review and discusses the generation of sustainability in refugee camps and its relationship with human rights protected by rules of international law. Aspects such as the circular humanitarian supply chain are for the first time discussed, introducing the circular economy to refugee settlements.

Asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants’ access to healthcare vary in South Africa and Cape Town due to unclear legal status. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the source of this variation, the divergence between the 1996 South African Constitution, the immigration laws, and regulations and to describe its harmful consequences.

Based on legal and ethnographic research, this paper documents the disjuncture between South African statutes and regulations and the South African Constitution regarding refugees and migrants’ access to healthcare. Research involved examining South African jurisprudence, the African Charter, and United Nations’ materials regarding rights to health and health care access, and speaking with civil society organizations and healthcare providers. These sources inform the description of the immigrant access to healthcare in Cape Town, South Africa.

Asylum-seekers and refugees are entitled to health and emergency care; however, hospital administrators require documentation (up-to-date permits) before care can be administered. Many immigrants – especially the undocumented – are often unable to obtain care because of a lack of papers or because of “progressive realization,” the notion that the state cannot presently afford to provide treatment in accordance with constitutional rights. These explanations have put healthcare providers in an untenable position of not being able to treat patients, including some who face fatal conditions.

The research is limited by the fact that South African courts have not adjudicated a direct challenge to being refused care at healthcare facility on the basis of legal status. This limits the ability to know how rights afforded to “everyone” within the South African Constitution will be interpreted with respect to immigrants seeking healthcare. The research is also limited by the non-circulation of healthcare admissions policies among leading facilities in the Cape Town region where the case study is based.

Articulation of the disjuncture between the South African Constitution and the immigration laws and regulations allows stakeholders and decision-makers to reframe provincial and municipal policies about healthcare access in terms of constitutional rights and the practical limitations accommodated through progressive realization.

In South Africa, immigration statutes and regulations are inconsistent and deemed unconstitutional with respect to the treatment of undocumented migrants. Hospital administrators are narrowly interpreting the laws to instruct healthcare providers on how to treat patients and whom they can treat. These practices need to stop. Access to healthcare must be structured to comport with the constitutional right afforded to everyone, and with progressive realization pursued through a non – discriminatory policy regarding vulnerable immigrants.

This paper presents a unique case study that combines legal and social science methods to explore a common and acute question of health care access. The case is novel and instructive insofar as South Africa has not established refugee camps in response to rising numbers of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. South Africans thus confront a “first world” question of equitable access to healthcare within their African context and with limited resources in a climate of increasing xenophobia.

This British Academy/Leverhulme-funded research (Grant number: SG170394) investigated the experiences and impact of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and torture on South Sudanese refugees’ health and rights and the responses of health and justice services in Northern Uganda.

It involved thematic analysis of the narratives of 20 men and 41 women refugees’ survivors of SGBV and torture; this included their experiences in South Sudan, their journeys to Uganda and experiences in refugee settlements. In total, 37 key stakeholders including health and justice providers, police, non-government and government organisations were also interviewed regarding their experiences of providing services to refugees.

All refugees had survived human rights abuses carried out in South Sudan, on route to Uganda and within Uganda. Incidents of violence, SGBV, torture and other human rights abuses declined significantly for men in Uganda, but women reported SGBV incidents. The research demonstrates linkages between the physical, psychological, social/cultural and justice/human rights impact on women and men refugees, which amplified the impact of their experiences. There was limited screening, physical and psychological health and support services; including livelihoods and education. Refugees remained concerned about violence and SGBV in the refugee settlements. While they all knew of the reporting system for such incidents, they questioned the effectiveness of the process. For this reason, women opted for family reconciliation rather than reporting domestic violence or SGBV to the authorities. Men found it hard to report incidences due to high levels of stigma and shame.

Refugees largely fled South Sudan to escape human rights abuses including, persecution, SGBV and torture. Their experiences resulted in physical, psychological, social-cultural and justice effects that received limited responses by health and justice services. An integrated approach to meeting refugees’ needs is required.

The authors make recommendations for integrated gender sensitive service provision for refugees including more systematic screening, assessment and treatment of SGBV and torture physical and emotional injuries combined with implementation of livelihoods and social enterprises.

The research demonstrates that stigma and shame, particularly for male refugee survivors of SGBV and torture, impacts on ability to report these incidents and seek treatment. Increasing gender sensitivity of services to these issues, alongside provision of medical treatment for injuries, alongside improved informal justice processes, may assist to counteract shame and increase disclosure.

There is currently a lack of empirical investigation of this subject area, therefore this research makes a contribution to the subject of understanding refugees’ experiences of SGBV and torture, as well as their perceptions of service provision and response. This subject is strategically important due to the pressing need to develop integrated, gendered and culturally sensitive services that listen to the voices and draw on the expertise of refugees themselves while using their skills to inform improvements in service responses and policy.

This chapter examines how international human rights law is shaping the politics of immigration. It argues that migrant human rights are neither conceptually nor practically incompatible with an international order premised upon state territorial sovereignty, and that the specific aesthetics of the contemporary international human rights system, namely its formalistic and legalistic tendencies, has facilitated its integration with a realm of policymaking traditionally reserved to state discretion. An exploration of two areas in the emerging field of migrant human rights traces the multi-scalar transnational legal processes through which these norms are formulated and internalized.

The chapter describes the refugee crisis, its various challenges, and followed by arguments on recognizing refugee qualifications. Key contexts related to refugees including human rights (especially to education and work), access and equity in education and the labor force, and refugee integration into host countries. The Norwegian Quality Assurance Agency’s initiatives on the recognition of refugee qualifications and the establishment of a European Passport for Refugees are presented to highlight the importance of increasing refugee access to further education and entry to the labor force through facilitating recognition of their qualifications.

This paper aims at contributing to our understanding of how self-settled Syrian refugees (registered and non-registered) use informal practices to forge their non-political agency and how this agency could be considered as political acts.

This paper was conducted per the qualitative data analysis (in-depth interviews and participant observation), attributed to the critical ethnographic approach, through which refugees’ everyday struggle is explored, additionally, that was incorporated with the analysis of Syrians’ Facebook groups and formal sources.

The research paper concluded that everyday struggle strategies are considered as political acts by acquiring rights that many self-settled Syrian refugees are stripped of by international humanitarian agencies and host government. Hence, registered and unregistered refugees equally forge what is called “informal citizenship” through their presence via a blend of agency forms ranging from hidden agency to explicit one and via their incorporating into the informal contexts, leading them to carve a position of semi-legality that help them to circumvent the formal structural hardship.

This paper endeavors to study how urban refugees as change agents can convert their illegal presence to “probably refugeeness” to unsettle the prominent recognition of them as illegal non-citizens in southern cities.

The study aimed to listen to refugee survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and/or torture and explore what justice meant to them in exile. This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. The research was funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.

Using a survivor-focussed justice lens combined with a trauma-informed approach, narrative interviews were held with 41 women and 20 men refugee survivors living in refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. The researchers also conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 key informants including refugee welfare councils, the UN, civil society, non-government and government organisations. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in the following themes being identified: no hope of formal justice for atrocities that occurred in South Sudan; insecurity; lack of confidence in transitional justice processes in Ugandan refugee settlements; abuse and loss of freedom in refugee settlements; and lack of access to health and justice services in refugee settlements.

This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. That is justice that is survivor-centred and includes elements of traditional and transitional justice, underpinned by social justice. By including the voices of both men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and getting the views of service providers and other stakeholders, this paper offers an alternative form of justice to the internationally accepted types of justice, which offer little relevance or restitution to refugees, particularly where the crime has been committed in a different country and where there is little chance that perpetrators will be prosecuted in a formal court of law.

The research findings are based on a small sample of South Sudanese refugees living in three refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. Thus, wider conclusions should not be drawn. However, the research does suggest that a “viable justice” approach should be implemented that is gender and culturally sensitive and which could also be trialled in different refugee contexts.

Improvements in refugee survivors’ dignity, resilience and recovery are dependent upon the active engagement of refugees themselves using a “survivor-focussed approach” which combines formal and community-based health services with traditional and transitional justice responses.

The provision of a “viable justice approach” ensures those who have experienced SGBV and/or torture, and their families, feel validated. It will assist them to use their internal, cultural and traditional resilience and agency in the process of recovery.

The research findings are original in that data was collected from men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and service providers. The empirical evidence supports this study’s recommendation for an approach that combines both formal and survivor-focussed approaches towards health and viable justice services to meet the needs of refugees living in refugee settlements. This is a response that listens to and responds to the needs of refugee survivors in a way that continues to build their resilience and agency and restores their dignity.

This chapter highlights the plight of refugees and the strategies and policies crafted by international agencies and non-governmental institutions in providing better access to education especially for refugee children. The chapter explores some of the key terminologies that distinguish refugees from asylum seekers and internally displaced person. The terminologies are significant as the opportunities and facilities handed out differ significantly depending on their status. The chapter then talks about some of the policies toward imparting education and the school- and system-level factors responsible for accessing education. The last section of the chapter summarizes the overview of various chapters that will feature in this volume, talking about cases and interventions from Malawi to Australia.