President-elect Barack Obama believes that displacement poses both humanitarian and security problems.  A recent article in The New York Times illustrates this point by describing problems caused by angry youths in Sudanese refugee camps.

Some 2.7 million people in the Darfur region of Sudan have been displaced by five years of civil war, and many of them live in vast camps.  “Increasingly angry and outspoken about their uncertain fate, the generation that came of age in the camps is challenging the traditional sheiks, upending the age-old authority structure of their tribal society and complicating efforts to achieve peace,” The Times reported over the weekend.

The story caught my eye because it highlights a serious problem:  long stays in camps—either as refugees out of their countries or displaced within their own countries—can radicalize youth.  We have seen this over the years with Palestinians and with Afghan refugees, and we could well see it with displaced Iraqi youths who are living in increasingly desperate conditions.

In late November, just before Thanksgiving, we visited a group of 30 Rohingya men in Penang, Malaysia.  We were anxious to visit areas outside of Kuala Lumpur, where civil society is slowly improving services for Burmese refugees.  We wanted to see whether refugees nationwide were receiving more attention.

Lunch in the cafeteria of the United Nations headquarters building in New York is always a slightly strange experience

Sixty years ago this week, the United Nations General Assembly adopted two documents that were meant to change the world—the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Sean and I just returned from our mission to Bangladesh and Malaysia, where we focused on the situation for Burmese Rohingya refugees in both countries.  I last conducted an assessment mission to Malaysia in April 2007.