Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.

Both practitioners and academics have recently begun referring to humanitarian agencies operating within an active 'aid marketplace' in which limited funding pits actors against each other in pursuance of their own projects and wider aims. This thesis seeks to explore how the pressures of a competitive environment impact on the motivations and actions of aid actors at an individual and organizational level. Based on the common saying that aid workers are 'mercenaries, missionaries and misfits', I construct a typology of pressures (interest-based, altruistic, and bureaucratic), which, it is argued, can be used to explain and understand much of this competitive and collaborative behaviour. A particular focus of the thesis is the impact of these various influences on the process and politics of information transfer and discourse creation regarding the process of needs assessment, monitoring and evaluation. I explore all of these issues through the medium of a case study of UNHCR's interventions in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2015, and seek to provide a detailed history of the agency's activities, politics and challenges during this period. In particular I am interested in the motivations driving the agency's actions; the strategies it has employed to achieve its aims; the calculated narratives that it has crafted to justify its interventions and attract greater support; and the very different ways in which it has approached the needs of different categories of displaced people.

No description available.

Although civil war affects all civilians, it impacts men and women in different ways, and it influences their gender roles and responsibilities. Comparatively little attention has been given to assessing the gender sensitivity of international organizations who implement post-conflict reconstruction programs. The different social, economic and political dimensions of war to peace transitions, and how they impact on gender relations, can shed some light on the complicated intersections of needs and interests in wartorn societies. An examination of the policies of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Bank reveals that there is relatively little gender mainstreaming within their post-conflict operations. This research finds that the lack of resources and coordination, the failure to build on local capacities, and a lack of commitment to gender mainstreaming are the main obstacles these organizations face. To improve the situation it is recommended that organizations develop and use a 'gender checklist' at all stages of project planning, implementation and monitoring to ensure increased gender sensitivity in post-conflict programming.

This thesis by article contains three chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of recent developments in global refugee education policy to situate Refugee Education 2030, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ current international refugee education strategy, within global policy initiatives. It then reviews the literature on refugee education policy that informed the development of a methodology of vertical policy coherence analysis with Refugee Education 2030 to answer the research questions of the thesis. Finally, it addresses my researcher positionality and journey leading to the thesis. The second chapter contains the manuscript for an article. The purpose of the article is to analyze the vertical coherence of Canadian policy regimes towards the primary and secondary education of refugee children and youth with Refugee Education 2030. The article presents a theoretical framework for policy coherence analysis that combines policy coherence theory, policy attributes theory, and policy behaviour theory, as well as a tri-phasic methodology for vertical policy coherence analysis with an international framework designed to be adapted to different contexts to guide the development of country-specific education policies. The theoretical framework and methodology are applied to determine the categories of needs underpinning Enabling Activities of a Strategic Objective of Refugee Education 2030, to assess these needs as presented by refugee children and youth in Canada, and to analyze the coherence of Canadian education policy responses to these needs with Refugee Education 2030. The findings indicate that there are five categories of needs inherent in the Enabling Activities of the selected Strategic Objective, specifically access to education, accelerated education, language education, mental health and psychosocial support, and special education; that all of these categories of needs are present in refugee claimant and/or refugee children and youth in all of Canada’s educational jurisdictions; and that there are significant gaps in policy responses to these needs. Taken together, the findings permitted a discussion on priorities for the revision and development of refugee education policy across Canadian jurisdictions to ensure greater coherence with Refugee Education 2030. The third chapter summarizes the findings of the contextualized analysis of the vertical coherence of Canadian refugee education policy regimes with Refugee Education 2030. Additional findings that could not be incorporated in the article due to the manuscript submission guidelines Schutte iv of the intended journal of publication are then presented and discussed. The thesis concludes with reflections on my research journey.

Cette thèse soulève l’importance d’acteurs et de voies de transferts souvent négligés en adoptant une perspective longitudinale et multi-niveaux sur les transferts internationaux de normes et de politiques. Elle examine le rôle d’organisations internationales dans le développement de politiques et de pratiques relatives à l’asile en Ukraine depuis la première loi sur les réfugiés en 1993 jusqu’en 2015. Elle montre la dépendance de l’action des organisations internationales (OI) et non-gouvernementales (ONG) à l’égard de modes d’influence plus connus, telles que la conditionnalité sectorielle exercée par l’Union Européenne, mais elle met aussi en lumière les modalités propres à leurs interventions. Elle étudie les interactions et les relations entre les acteurs étatiques et non-étatiques au long d’une « chaîne de transferts », révélant les logiques de dépendance, de délégation et de contrôle ainsi que les processus de traduction, de soutien et de résistance aux transferts. En analysant le soutien et des formes subtiles de résistance à l’adoption législative des normes internationales par le Parlement, elle montre l’impact de la quête de reconnaissance internationale et d’incitations offertes par les OI. Les OI et les ONG cherchent à influencer les pratiques étatiques en adaptant leurs stratégies aux résistances et aux obstacles structurels, par des approches consensuelles ou confrontatives, formelles ou informelles, verticales ou horizontales. En dépit de l’effort des entrepreneurs de normes pour induire la formalisation de certains changements, les effets des transferts sur les pratiques étatiques restent hétérogènes et instables. / This thesis uncovers the importance of often overlooked actors and transfer channels by adopting a longitudinal and multi-level perspective on international norm and policy transfer. It examines the role of international organisations in the development of asylum policies and practices in Ukraine since the adoption of the first Law on Refugees. It shows how the action of international and domestic non-governmental organisations is interlinked with and differs from the sector-specific conditionality exercised by the European Union. In this manner, it enriches the findings on transfer from research that has mostly focused on top-down processes and political elite actors. It investigates the interactions and relations between state and non-state actors of the “transfer chain”, revealing logics of dependence, delegation and control as well as processes of translation, support and resistance. Analysing the support and subtle forms of resistance to the legislative adoption of international norms at the Parliament, it demonstrates that adoption is shaped, to a large extent, by domestic politicians’ pursuit of recognition and incentives by international organisations. Moreover, non-state actors seek to influence state practices by adapting their strategies to domestic resistance and structural obstacles, utilising confrontational and harmony-seeking, formal and informal, top-down and horizontal strategies. While norm entrepreneurs try to trigger the formalisation of certain changes, the effects of the transfer attempts on state practices remain heterogeneous and unstable. This thesis thus adds to transfer scholars’ widespread findings regarding the weak application of norms.

[pt] O propósito deste trabalho é compreender a política de repatriação voluntária de refugiados desenvolvida pelo Alto Comissariado das Nações Unidas para Refugiados (ACNUR), tendo como referência o processo de repatriação de refugiados angolanos, entre 1975 e 2013. Esta dissertação analisará também os fatores condicionantes históricos, especialmente entre a Guerra Fria e seu término, o processo de construção e reconstrução da figura do refugiado e como referida figura se insere no sistema internacional. O processo de constituição do Estado angolano, após a independência, e a presença das Missões de Paz das Nações Unidas em Angola formam o pano de fundo das diferentes tentativas de repatriação de refugiados nos últimos quarenta anos. A partir de experiências precedentes de repatriação voluntária, efetuadas na África, serão investigadas as linhas gerais desenvolvidas pelo ACNUR para solucionar a questão dos refugiados angolanos. / [en] The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the policy of voluntary repatriation of refugees developed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with reference to the process of repatriation of Angolan refugees between 1975 and 2013. This dissertation will also examine the historical factors, especially between the Cold War and its end, the processes of construction and reconstruction of the figure of the refugee and how it fits into the international system of States. The process of formation of the Angolan State, after independence, and the presence of Peacekeeping Missions of the United Nations in Angola form the backdrop of the various attempts to repatriate refugees in the last forty years. From previous experiences of voluntary repatriation in Africa, the dissertation investigates the general guidelines developed by UNHCR to solve the question of Angolan refugees.